


Put down the apple, Adam, and come away with me

by Arokel



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: A motley assortment of cameos just sort of shoved into the last 5000 words of the fic, Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - America, Angst with a Happy Ending, By which I mean characters repeat 1950s queer stereotypes verbatim, Daughters of Bilitis, Demisexual Crowley (Good Omens), Good AUmens AU Festival, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Internalized Homophobia, Just a boatload of historical research, Light Angst, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Please appreciate all the research I did, Professor Aziraphale (Good Omens), Spy Crowley (Good Omens), because why not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:34:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24690865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arokel/pseuds/Arokel
Summary: Special Agent Anthony Crowley hadn't assumed infiltrating a lesbian convention to sniff out anti-American sentiments would beeasy, but he also hadn't banked on an ambiguously-queer academic with peroxide-blonde hair and a talent for seeing right through him.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Carol Aird/Therese Belivet (background)
Comments: 100
Kudos: 128
Collections: Good AUmens AU Fest





	1. Friday

**Author's Note:**

> UPDATE: I'm better now! Was it COVID? Who knows! But I don't feel like I'm dying all the time so things are looking up.
> 
> Warning that there are a LOT of period-typical terms for queerness and period-typical _thoughts_ about queerness. There are no slurs and no outright acts of homophobia, but characters perpetuate stereotypes about themselves and others that might be uncomfortable if you have personal experience with homophobia. Take care of yourselves and if you think I should add any tags, tell me <3
> 
> Title comes from the Emily Dickinson poem 'Sic Transit Gloria Mundi'.
> 
> Historical notes at the end!

_There were three ways a potential attendee could learn about the Daughters of Bilitis’ second biennial convention: by invitation from a Daughter herself, by subscribing to the organization’s mailing list, or by reading about it in the newspaper._

_Special Agent Anthony J. Crowley, working under orders from the United States government to investigate homophile organizations, had learned about it in a fourth way, long before most of the convention-goers had mailed back their RSVPs and the venue owner grudgingly agreed to book the space. But if anyone were to ask, he read it in the newspaper._

* * *

Crowley stepped out the door of his hotel room with the cultivated confidence of one embarking into enemy territory. His suit was just shabby enough to look like it might be a work suit doubling as a formal one, the midwestern accent he had shed in the war was back in subtle force, and the adrenaline in his veins bled into his posture just enough to read as anxiety. He was a man ready to face down something far more daunting than an army.

Almost immediately, his foot hit up on a copy of the Wall Street Journal left on his doorstep by some helpful hotel employee and he stumbled, grabbing the door handle for support.

Perhaps that was an ill omen.

He had thought, in the moment before he tripped, that there was someone exiting the room across and two doors down from his, but when he looked again, the hallway was empty. There was, however, a man waiting for the elevator when Crowley gathered his dignity for the trip down, looking him over with an appraising eye. Crowley looked back.

The man looked to be in his late thirties, or early forties – it was difficult to tell, between the youthfully-chubby face and the peroxide-blonde hair. The small informational pamphlet on spotting homosexuals issued to all agents in such situations flickered in Crowley’s mind.

Aside from the hair, there was nothing about him to indicate any deviant tendencies, save… something in his bearing, in the softness of his hands where they gripped a file folder to his chest, a pale contrast against his suit that drew Crowley’s eyes. And yet there was _something._ Crowley couldn’t say how he knew, but he knew he was right.

“Thoughtful of them to leave the paper for us,” the man said. His voice was as soft as the rest of him, with a light, unplaceable accent – something European, rubbed smooth by years Stateside. It was a pleasant voice, almost soothing to hear. There was no hint of mockery or unkindness in it, but Crowley knew, from that mild observation, that there had, in fact, been someone in the hall, and this man had witnessed Crowley’s stumbling start to the day.

“I’m afraid I don’t read the financial news,” Crowley said.

The man cracked a beatific smile. “Neither do I. But it makes a good door-stopper.”

No mockery, no, but there was an invitation, if Crowley wanted to take it. This was not a man who made one-sided jokes.

“The headline was very arresting, I’ll give it that. Stopped me in my tracks.” Crowley let the smallest of smiles flicker over his face and settle there. This man had no part in Crowley’s objective; he was just a stranger in a strange city offering a human connection, no matter how brief.

“Oh? What’s new in the economy?”

“Japanese cars are causing the recession and Americans aren’t buying enough cereal, probably.”

The man’s laugh was like church bells, ringing out a wedding or a christening. His hand, when Crowley took it, was warm. “Ezra Fell.”

“Anthony Crowley.”

The elevator dinged.

Crowley hesitated, some misapplied chivalry in him saying that Ezra should enter first. Ezra, however, clearly had the same thought, because, with an odd half-bow, he stepped aside and extended an arm to let Crowley in ahead of him.

Well. Crowley was already going to spend his weekend in a room full of up-ended gender roles; he might as well step into an elevator first.

But he would push his own button.

“Which floor?” he asked – merely to be courteous, since he was already there, but it felt suddenly very important that he now be the chivalrous one. Was this how homosexuals lived their lives, this exhausting give-and-take of power? Did they keep scorecards?

Ezra, privy to none of this, did not take offense. “Same as you.”

Crowley let his hand drop, feeling… foiled, somehow.

“Going to a conference, are you?” Ezra asked, into the ensuing silence.

“Of a sort. You?”

“Of a sort.”

Crowley was debating how to feel about that mimicking reply when the elevator door dinged open again.

Crowley had expected, when he and Ezra descended to ‘L’ together, that they would walk together, too. _Of a sort_ was perhaps just Ezra’s inclusive, teasing wit again. But when Crowley turned left, Ezra kept straight, towards the main doors.

“Well, this is where we part.” Before Crowley could investigate the small twinge of disappointment he felt at losing his walking companion, Ezra turned back. “I’m on the hunt for a decent cup of coffee; do you know anywhere?”

“I haven’t been outside the hotel,” Crowley said, words clumsy in his mouth, “but there’s instant stuff in the dining room.” He had no plans to drink it; he didn’t need to be more jittery than he already was. But it might be nice to walk into the convention with a cup of coffee and a friend, like a child on the first day of kindergarten who declares his seat-mate his new best friend simply out of the human desire to have someone by your side for a daunting experience.

Ezra pulled a face, and Crowley tried not to feel like a rejected five-year-old. “Afraid I can’t. I only drink espresso – terrible European habit, I know. But it means I must brave the outside world in search of it.” He paused, and then, with a crooked smile, inclined his head in parting and walked out the door. “Enjoy your conference.”

“You, too.”

The words felt wooden in Crowley’s mouth as he stood by himself in the marble-tiled atrium, watching Ezra’s figure disappearing through the glass of the revolving door.

Should he have offered to go along? Was that what that had been, a scavenger hunt-cum-coffee date? Was that what homosexuals did, when they encountered each other in the wild?

Crowley had seen gay bars, in his line of work, had seen the men lined up against the wall in their flamboyant clothes and the women in their denim pants, defiant in the face of arrest and exposure. He knew homosexual gathering-places as places of vice, iniquity; all those words moralizing preachers liked to throw about. But something as innocent as a coffee date – surely homosexuals didn’t do that.

It didn’t matter if they did, he supposed, because they were not going to the same conference. Ezra was perhaps a bit effeminate, but one could pick up lots of things in Europe. The espresso hunt had not been an offer, or if it had, it had been a friendly one.

At least Crowley didn’t have to wonder if everyone else he met today would be homosexual.

He debated grabbing a coffee after all but couldn’t bring himself to accept the defeat it signaled. This was not a cocktail party, where one had to hold a drink to seem interesting and at-ease. This was work, and Crowley was most at his ease when at work.

Putting his hands in his pockets would seem non-threatening, he thought, but also perhaps too much like discomfort. Casual yet poised, that was the way to go.

So, mind made up, if not settled, Crowley took a breath, opened the double door, and, palms open at his sides like a surrender, walked straight into a room full of two hundred lesbians.

* * *

The first thing that struck Crowley was how… normal they all looked, for lack of a better descriptor. And yes, of course, they were deviant, and perverted, and all those hyperbolic psychiatric terms Crowley wasn’t sure he believed. But still, very normal.

Crowley had read his demographic primer, read the things they wrote about themselves, their god-damned internal polling, and yet he still wasn’t prepared. These were middle class lesbians, the ones who blended in to your neighborhood: the older divorcee, unlucky in love, or the two young working women who split a one-bedroom to save on rent. These were the dangerous ones.

Crowley did spot a few butches here and there in their tailored trousers and shaved haircuts, but by and large they kept to themselves. He saw some of the more conservatively-dressed women throwing them disapproving glances. Tension within the movement, then. Good to know.

He realized he looked dumbstruck, and must have for a while, when a woman wearing a lacquered nametag approached him.

“You look lost.”

She was perhaps in her mid-sixties, short, with close-cut, greying hair she hadn’t bothered to dye. Crowley could respect a woman who chose to age gracefully.

He surreptitiously tried to read the name on her badge, but the lapel of her blazer obscured all but an ‘R’ and the beginnings of an ‘a’. “Yes, I think I might be. Could you perhaps direct me to the other lesbian convention happening in this hotel today?”

“Oh, a charmer. But I’m afraid you won’t have much success here. Ray Pearson”, she said, extending a hand, then added, seeing Crowley’s dubious once-over of her outfit, “Raye with an E.”

“Ah,” Crowley said, with a sheepish grin. “My apologies. That was very rude of me.”

“I get it often enough, in this crowd.”

“I’m not usually so blatant.”

“When you eye up a woman to see if she’s butch, you mean?”

“If I look long enough, one of you is bound to be a bisexual,” Crowley said easily.

“Poor soul, whoever she is,” Raye said, in a teasing voice to match Crowley’s. “Some of these women can be very old fashioned. But we are, of course, dedicated to the empowerment of all women.”

“Yes, it really does seem to be all women, doesn’t it? Makes a man feel uneasy.”

Raye laughed. “What brings you here, then, besides the lure of women who won’t fall for your wit?”

“My sister asked me. Her husband doesn’t mind her liking women; he thinks it’s silly and harmless. But he’d draw the line at this sort of thing, and I was in the area… so I’m to report back.”

It was true, except for the part where Crowley hadn’t spoken to his sister in years, not since he returned from the war to her empty bedroom and his tight-lipped parents. And he _was_ to report back, only to ears much less sympathetic than those of a woman longing for a glimpse of her own kind.

Raye nodded sympathetically. “That’s very kind of you.”

“It’s no trouble.”

Raye hummed. “Well, we’ll see if we can make it worth your while. Let me show you around.”

“Really, you don’t – “

“Nonsense. You’ll never make friends on your own.”

Crowley would have protested that he was not there to _make friends,_ but Raye attached herself to his arm with an uncompromising grip and steered him along the periphery of the room, making introductions as they went.

There followed a seemingly endless parade of lesbians, all with what looked like the same haircut and the same pair of glasses. Names and faces blurred in Crowley’s mind, try as he did to commit to memory who-did-what and who-knew-whom. Many of them asked if he was with the Mattachine Society, of which he recalled just enough to deny membership.

If they were trying to throw him off the scent by acting as if every single person in the room was equally important for him to meet, he thought, it was working.

Raye finally deposited him near the entrance once more, abandoning him to the company of Therese - pronounced Te-rez, like the French - a stage designer from New York, and who he presumed to be her partner, an older woman with a regal air who held herself with such an aloofness that even Crowley had to be impressed.

Therese’s bubbly energy was charming, but Crowley was more struck by the way her partner looked at him, calculating and aware, and declined to give her name.

 _She has something to lose, being here_ , Crowley thought. _She must love this girl very much to risk it._

It was an uncomfortable thought, hot on the heels of Raye’s warm introduction. These relationships were not healthy; love didn’t enter into it. Therese was doomed to disappointment.

“We’ve been together for eight years,” Therese enthused, “but we’ve never really gone out and met other lesbians, you know? Carol didn’t want to come, but I said, well, when else are we going to meet other people like us? We can’t well go out to bars; we have our careers to think of – “

“Eight years?” Crowley interrupted, watching Carol’s face pinch. Therese, it seemed, was not good at reading the room. “That’s a long time.”

“Yes, well, we’ve had our ups and downs, but some things are worth fighting for, I think,” Therese said, earnest as ever. Beneath it, though, Crowley heard a determination, the certainty of a woman who had given up much in her fight to have this. One had to respect their tenacity, at least.

Crowley flashed a smile. “Isn’t that why we’re all here?”

“Not all of us.”

It was the second thing Crowley had heard Carol say, apart from ‘hello’. She had a rich, husky voice, perfectly enunciated, and Crowley could see how a woman with that much steel behind her words would chafe at a man’s control.

“Oh?”

“I, for one, thought it would be more of a social occasion.”

Her dry wit, spoken with only the barest hint of a smile, startled a laugh out of Crowley. “So did I. Although this promises to be quite educational.”

Carol raised one perfect, golden brow, looking Crowley over, lips pursed in a mockery of consideration. “I’m not sure any amount of education could sway you to our side.”

It was too much, too close to home, and Crowley gave a smooth, practiced grin, the rakish sort that was wasted on every woman there.

“There’s hope for me yet,” he said, hoping his redirection would seem charming rather than suspicious. “I’m sure I’d fill out a dress quite well.”

“Please don’t,” said a voice from behind him, “I can’t be the only one in a suit.”

Crowley turned towards the voice, deeper than any he had heard all morning. It was the man from the elevator – Ezra something. An unusual last name, and one Crowley should have made a note of, but he had been too distracted by conventions and coffee dates.

“There are quite a number of people here in suits. But I suppose not quite so conventional as ours.”

Fell, that was it. Ezra Fell. Oddly biblical, for someone going so strongly against God’s laws. Not that Crowley believed in that sort of thing, but maybe Ezra did.

“You look just as dashing as any butch,” Ezra assured him with a wink. Crowley fought the urge to fidget with his cufflinks. He had thought a hotelful of lesbians would mean he _wouldn’t_ have to worry whether he was being propositioned or not, but Ezra had twice proved him wrong.

Therese laughed, placing her hand on Crowley’s arm with a familiarity Crowley did not think she had earned. “Well, we’ll leave you two gentlemen to get to know each other better,” she said with a wink. To Ezra, she added, “I’m excited to hear you speak.”

Ezra, Crowley was relieved to discover, was not a particularly touchy-feely person – or at least, he did not feel a need to touch Crowley to guide him away from Therese; he merely turned away and walked as if he expected Crowley to follow.

Crowley did.

He would have been offended at that easy presumption, except that he sensed Ezra, quietly perceptive as Crowley thought him to be, could see Crowley’s discomfort with the current conversation and correctly assumed he would take any opportunity to leave it. So Crowley gamely trailed Ezra to an unoccupied patch of wall, a nondescript beige that almost matched Ezra’s suit, blurring his edges and making him seem suddenly very ordinary.

Crowley relaxed as much as he was able. He shouldn’t, he knew, around a man so obviously homosexual. But Ezra, before an object of intrigue, was now the least threatening person in the room. Ideologically, at least.

“Did you find your coffee?” Crowley asked. It seemed to him no time had passed since they parted, but God knew how long meeting several dozen lesbians had taken. It was a bit of a blur.

“Alas, no. I heard of a place, but it was quite a walk and I thought you might need rescuing. And I was right.”

Crowley was quickly learning that Ezra had a talent for saying things that ordinarily would have put Crowley on the defensive, but with a disarming matter-of-factness that took the sting from them entirely. “How did you know?”

“They have a tendency to overwhelm any new male guests. You’re a bit of a curiosity.”

“That I was headed here. I thought there was some sort of orthodontics conference happening today as well.”

Ezra gave him another appraising once-over that didn’t _look_ queer, but Crowley couldn’t get complacent. “No man is that circumspect about orthodontia. And you don’t really strike me as the type.”

Well, he had Crowley there.

“Anyway,” Ezra continued, “the association pulled out when they learned who they’d be sharing the venue with. They’re across the street.”

“Therese said you’re speaking?” Crowley said, sensing the conversation winding to a halt. Dangerous as it might be to show too much interest in Ezra, he was a single point of familiarity in a sea of _un_ familiar interactions, and Crowley would cling to him until he felt able to navigate those waters. Or until Ezra tired of playing lifeguard, he supposed.

Ezra frowned. “She doesn’t look French.”

“I don’t think she is.”

“I am. Speaking, I mean.” Ezra laughed self-consciously. “Not until Sunday, so I shouldn’t be nervous yet. But I’m not used to discussing my research outside of office hours.”

“You’re a professor,” Crowley said, several things clicking into place and several things suddenly becoming a lot less clear. European and an academic could explain all the effeminate peculiarities – or they could signal an even greater likelihood of homosexuality. It really could go either way. Crowley really should be better at spotting queers, considering.

“Psychology, Marymount College. But I would never present this to my students.”

Crowley almost said that he lived in Arlington, too, but didn’t, in case Ezra really did invite him for coffee when they got back.

“What kind of research?” he asked, though he thought he knew. A group of lesbians might want to hear about a study saying they weren’t deviants after all, but that wasn’t the sort of thing you said at a university until you had tenure.

Ezra _did_ look quite flustered, which did not bode well for his nerves on Sunday. “It’s – well, it’s a bit of blend, but the gist is –“

“Perhaps it would be better in full,” Crowley said, taking pity.

Ezra’s smile was relieved. “Yes, probably. Lots of numbers and scientific mumbo-jumbo.”

Again, Crowley could not bring himself to be offended. Ezra had a forgivable face. “Well, I should release you to your test subjects. Thank you for the rescue.” He winced. ‘Test subjects’, in this instance, sounded almost derogatory. Crowley was doing a stellar job.

Luckily, Ezra also seemed willing to forgive, because he merely gave a wry smile and a conspiratorial wink. “You looked like you could use some male company – of course, not like - I don't mean it in that way, of course,” he hastened to add, sporting a blush to match the one Crowley was sure stained his own cheeks. Crowley searched for an unsaid _unless you want me to,_ but if it was there he couldn't find it. Would Ezra be denying it so fervently if Crowley had said yes to coffee, he wondered.

“Seems almost blasphemous to suggest it, in a room full of so many lesbians,” Crowley said, hoping Ezra could not see that Crowley was unfortunately now thinking of it very specifically _in that way._ “Wouldn’t want to intrude on their sanctuary with our aggressive male sexuality.”

“That’s very considerate of you,” Ezra said, and his laugh didn’t sound forced at all, which was endlessly frustrating to Crowley. If he could just determine whether Ezra was homosexual or no, he could decide his course.

He felt a draw to Ezra he didn’t often feel. Ezra was intelligent, disarmingly funny, and, Crowley suspected, caustic in a wry way, if you got to know him. He was everything Crowley looked for in a friend. His political allegiances clashed a little with Crowley’s, sure, but all good friendships had hurdles to overcome. But if Ezra felt something beyond that, something more sinister than the desire for a new friend, that was not something Crowley should encourage.

But perhaps Ezra was like that with everyone. His natural gregariousness and genuine interest in other people couldn’t help but read as queer, perhaps, in an environment containing no amenable women to compare his interactions with. Ezra was probably too polite to be a proper flirt, anyway.

Ezra fixed him with a puzzled look. Perhaps Crowley’s internal calculations had been more external than he thought. “Well, I must, as you say, work the room. You might be a novelty, but as a psychologist I’m an object of suspicion.” He hesitated only minutely, just enough for Crowley to catch it and spin off into another round of ‘is-he’s. “You can come with, if you’d still like a buddy. You can take notes for me.”

Crowley was mostly sure he was joking.

“Mental ones, surely,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to spook any potential case studies by walking around with pen and paper.”

Ezra laughed, briefly touching Crowley on the arm to draw him away from the wall. So he was a toucher after all. Crowley found he didn’t mind the presumption nearly as much, coming from Ezra. He probably ought to discourage it, of course, but it was so brief, and so casual; surely there couldn’t be any harm in it.

“I think that might constitute a major breach of ethics,” Ezra said. “I’m afraid any notes you take are for your personal use only.”

And they would be, Crowley thought, following Ezra into the throng once more. Having someone like Ezra at his side was a blessing in several ways; he seemed to know all the higher-ups, and his tendency to ask after friends who were unable to attend provided Crowley with no shortage of names.

Truthfully, he had no idea what he was going to do with the list he was compiling. Keep tabs on them, he supposed. None of these people had ties to the American government, so in all likelihood they posed little risk as far as Crowley was concerned.

Ezra might not be a flirt, but he was a natural crowd-pleaser, unlike Crowley's studied charm. He was engaging and skilled at small talk, and at some point he would say “and this is Anthony,” and they would shake hands and then Crowley would step back and listen. Sticking with Ezra was a much better way to meet people than being paraded around like a cultural curiosity by Raye had been; enough so that Crowley temporarily found somewhere else to be when Ezra approached her. 

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of a sixty-year-old newspaper editor,” Ezra said, when Crowley returned form his brief conversation with Monica, a student of psychology at Columbia who was particularly interested to hear Ezra speak.

“That woman is a force of nature,” Crowley grumbled.

Ezra laughed, unfazed. “You seemed to be doing quite well on your own, over there. Time to leave the nest?”

“We found a common interest,” Crowley said, hoping he wouldn’t have to admit that that interest was Ezra himself. Monica had not been very helpful when Crowley had subtly plied her for hints about Ezra’s homosexuality, but she had been able to tell him the talk was to be about homosexual self-identification with classical figures, or something similarly academic. Not so number-heavy as Ezra had claimed.

He felt strangely reluctant to leave Ezra, though he was sure he could manage on his own if he tried. Ezra just had a natural draw, a calming essence, that kept Crowley at his side. He thought everyone else felt it too, if the way their initial suspicion of the psychiatric community melted away in the face of Ezra’s friendliness was any indication. With Ezra by his side, the weekend didn’t seem so daunting.

“You seem like a man with many interests.” Ezra gave him another one of those inscrutable, appraising looks. “Or at least many stories.”

“Only with a few drinks in me,” Crowley said, then cursed himself. That was unmistakably an invitation, even if he hadn’t meant it as one. And if coffee might not be the homosexual’s beverage of choice when wooing, or whatever it was they did, alcohol certainly was.

The corners of Ezra’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. Crowley pretended not to notice. “Maybe I’ll hear some of them, if you’re not tired of me by the end of today.”

Ever-perceptive, he seemed to sense Crowley’s chagrin, because he let Crowley’s silence stand and didn’t press for a response. Which was good, because Crowley didn’t have one.

Their meet-and-greet could have lasted all day, if the schedule allowed. Everyone, it seemed, knew the name Ezra Fell, and despite Ezra’s tongue-in-cheek insinuation that he would not be welcome, they all seemed excited to meet him. It was odd to think of the man Crowley had met at the elevator, who wore suits the color of the walls and apologized for his coffee habits, as a sort of celebrity. But watching Ezra stand prouder and smile broader when another woman thanked him for his work, Crowley began to realize how much Ezra meant to these people and how seriously he took that honor.

Time did not permit Ezra to make a full circuit of the room – though Crowley thought privately that with three days surely they could space out the introductions a bit – because they were on a tight schedule and the first speaker was slated for eleven o’clock.

Ezra made his way to the rows of chairs in the center of the room, again without so much as a backward glance. Crowley supposed he had given no indication he would do anything but follow, so follow he did.

Ezra had chosen seats towards the back, though the font section had yet to fill up, and Crowley quickly understood why.

“How will you feel when people whisper through your talk?” he admonished, after a particularly biting comment from Ezra about the speaker’s methodology.

“If I’m as boring as she is, I’ll expect it.”

“Who invited you?” Crowley said, halfheartedly snippy, as he searched for a safe topic. That was one, he supposed. In the back of his mind he knew that that kind of question was exactly the kind of question he should be asking, but he pushed that knowledge aside. It was an innocent inquiry, and if Crowley was going to spend three days with the man – as he had privately decided he would – they ought to get to know each other. As much as anyone could get to know Crowley.

Ezra took the jibe at face value and, to Crowley's surprise, answered. “My friend Evelyn.”

“Hooker?” Crowley rapidly revised his understanding of Ezra’s level of involvement in the homosexual community.

Ezra’s eyes also crinkled when he was trying not to laugh. “Different Evelyn. A colleague.”

Crowley flushed, realizing he had just betrayed the extent of _his_ knowledge of the homosexual community. He noticed, however, that Ezra had declined to provide an alternative last name. Smart, given the circumstance and Crowley’s mission. But he had genuinely wanted to know.

“Ah. A consortium sf sympathetic psychologists.”

He stopped short of saying ‘queer’; he didn’t think Ezra would take it well. Not because of the implications for his own sexuality – if it bothered him to be read as queer, he should stop dying his hair – but for the danger it might pose to his friend. _These_ were familiar waters. Crowley knew this information game.

“Classics and English literature, actually,” Ezra said, as if that made sense. He saw Crowley’s confusion and continued, “I’m a classicist. See this man?” He tapped a finger beside ‘Donald Webster Cory’ on the program. “It’s a pun. Don Cory – Corydon, Virgil’s passionate shepherd.”

“Gide,” Crowley said. Ezra sent him a look that was perhaps too knowing for safety, but he plowed on. Ezra might be well-read, but so was Crowley. “I picked up an affinity for French overseas.”

 _And perhaps more than that_ , Ezra’s hum seemed to insinuate. Crowley swallowed. But Ezra only said, “well, this is neither France nor Rome.”

“No, it isn’t.”

And that was that. Crowley was still, after the better part of a morning, at square one. Ezra was indecipherable.

The afternoon sessions were no more engaging than the morning’s speakers had been, in Crowley’s opinion. He supposed he might have found them interesting if they felt at all applicable to his own experience, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, he found himself unable to relate to any of what was being spoken.

It was worse when the men spoke. Crowley had not seen any of them in his whirlwind tour of the room, but there were a few. He suspected they were there to give the illusion of diversity, and the mistrustful looks he saw many of the women shoot them seemed to confirm that.

“I hate these men,” Ezra muttered, leaning his shoulder against Crowley’s to speak in his ear. “So self-righteous, as if they know the first thing of what they’re talking about.”

 _Like you do?_ Crowley stopped himself from saying. Confirming his assumptions would only complicate things, no matter how dearly he wanted to know. And there was no imaginable way Ezra, of all people, could be a threat to national security, so Crowley was under no obligation to investigate further.

He shifted, putting space between them once more, and winced at the audible scratch of wool on wool. So much for subtlety. “Why join them, then?”

Ezra shrugged, seemingly oblivious that the move brought their shoulders together again. “I wanted to do some good in the world.”

A butch woman in a suit uncomfortably similar to Crowley’s turned in her seat to glare back at them, and Ezra shot her an apologetic grin. At least, Crowley supposed, with someone so disarmingly queer on his arm no one would suspect him of working against them.

He hummed vaguely, not keen to draw any more attention to himself by speaking, but Ezra took it as an invitation to continue, crossing one ankle over the other and leaning more firmly into Crowley as he said, “I’ve always been interested in the way people work. Freud had many thoughts about Antigone, you know. And I worried, when we went to war again, if I couldn’t get a job…” He grimaced, accurately interpreting Crowley’s smirk. “Not that I used higher education as an excuse for draft-dodging, of course, it’s only… well, I’m a pacifist.”

“Aren’t we all, these days,” Crowley said mildly. Ezra looked chagrined. “So you earned a second PhD out of pure intellectual curiosity. A man of many talents.”

“But not so many stories, unfortunately,” Ezra said, ducking his head. It wasn’t quite coy, but it wasn’t _not_ coy, either. “I’m afraid I’ll have little to repay you with, tonight.”

So, there was a _tonight._ That, Crowley realized, stomach clenching in uncertain anticipation, was more frightening than anything he’d faced so far.

* * *

It was barely seven pm, but after a full day of speakers and socializing, Crowley felt done-in. Most of the women, however, especially those there to see old friends and make new ones, seemed eager to take their conversations elsewhere, to the many hidden bars pockmarking the city.

Crowley knew he should go with them. Perhaps after a few drinks a few of the more reckless ones would let their guards down. But he was tired, and he didn’t feel like tactfully fending off advances from _overt_ deviants all night. At least with Ezra, he could tell himself it was all in his head.

Ezra seemed to feel similarly, deep in conversation with a banker from Missouri – Diane, Crowley thought – apologetic but firm. Wandering closer, Crowley picked up “ – wouldn’t want to get in your way.”

Diane, by the slump of her shoulders, gave in. “Well, take our drink tickets. We won’t be using them. Have some fun,” she added, with a meaningful glance at Crowley.

Ezra followed her gaze, and, to Crowley’s unending annoyance, simply laughed. “Not tonight, I think.”

Diane released Ezra to Crowley’s company with a declaration that she was going to invite someone back to the hotel with her by the end of the night, or she would consider the whole convention a failure. He was still laughing when he reached Crowley, clutching what looked like at least thirty complimentary drink tickets in his hand.

“Planning to drink the entire bar dry?” Crowley drawled, pretending not to have heard the exchange.

“Seems a bit pathetic, to sit by myself and drink hotel liquor while my friends are out dancing,” Ezra said. He lifted the tickets, several of which fluttered to the ground. “How about it? It’s not coffee, I know, but it seems a shame to waste them. You can tell me your stories.”

Crowley hesitated. He should go to bed. He should run after Diane and beg her to let him tag along. He should focus on reconnaissance, not getting dangerously inebriated with an ambiguously homosexual man who invited him for drinks and coffee dates.

But Ezra had said ‘not tonight’. That didn’t mean not _any_ night, but it did mean that tonight, at least, would be strictly platonic. Or Platonic? Ezra would know, if Crowley asked. Which he couldn’t, because Ezra couldn’t know his internal debate.

Judging by his smile, Ezra already knew. Or he suspected something else.

Well Crowley would prove him wrong, then. He would get roaringly drunk and not make a single pass at Ezra, just to prove that smile wrong.

“Sitting alone by myself in a hotel room while all your friends are… enjoying each other’s company in theirs seems even more so.”

Ezra’s smile widened into a grin, with not a little bit of relief in it. Crowley felt a twinge of guilt for even considering disappointing him. “And we wouldn’t want to seem pathetic.”

“We’re ambassadors for our sex, here,” Crowley agreed. “Got to make a proper showing.”

“I couldn’t have said it better.”

For a brief moment, Crowley thought Ezra would take his hand, and they would walk to the bar like lovers, or like children given a dollar to buy soda or candy while the adults dined. For an even briefer moment, he considered letting him.

It felt clandestine, in a way Crowley’s actual work hadn’t thus far, two grown men sneaking off like boys to do something dumb and dangerous. Young boys on transgressive adventures held hands and no one thought a thing. And there was no one there to think save him and Ezra.

But the downward trajectory of Ezra’s hand continued as he slipped the tickets into the pocket of his slacks.

“If the bartender sees them all immediately he might refuse to serve us just out of principle.”

“Of course. Play it close to the chest.” Crowley said, feeling stupid. There were hotel staff, and bartenders, and anyone who might be walking the halls at night. The world did go on outside this conference room.

And Ezra had not been reaching for his hand.

Ezra held one hand up to his chest and shaded his eyes with the other in what Crowley assumed was supposed to be a poker dealer’s visor. In spite of his chagrin, Crowley found himself smiling. It was goofy, endearing and reassuring in its awkward humor. This was not flirting; this was two new friends unwinding with a drink after a long day. There was no reason to dwell on it.

Crowley had thought their presence at the bar might raise suspicion, but the bartender spared them barely a glance after taking their orders. Of course it made sense; outside of that conference room they were just two men in suits, perhaps on a business trip or, god forbid, orthodontists who hadn’t changed their bookings. And Ezra might not even be homosexual.

“Do we look like orthodontists?” Crowley asked, as the bartender slid their drinks across the bar and did not reply. Ezra gave him a perplexed glance, a cousin of the appraising one he had given Crowley at the elevator, and then again at the convention. Crowley supposed he would have to get used to being looked at, if he were to remain friends with Ezra.

“No orthodontist I could afford.”

Crowley self-consciously adjusted his jacket. He had, perhaps, overdressed; no one had told him ‘business casual’ was the theme. He would do things differently tomorrow.

“Don’t think that,” Ezra said, with uncanny perceptiveness. “It looks nice.”

Crowley blamed his flush on the too-large sip of brandy he took rather than reply.

“This is better than I expected,” Ezra said. He drank whiskey, which was, as was everything Ezra did, both a relief and an irritation. Crowley had been mentally fortifying himself for the possibility that Ezra drank fruity cocktails, but whiskey was a very safe, manly choice, perfectly unindicative of any sexual preference one way or the other.

“A low bar, perhaps,” said Crowley, whose brandy was just about as good as he had expected, which was to say, average quality for a hotel bar and swill at any decent establishment.

Ezra raised his brows, the picture of puzzled innocence. “It seems a perfectly serviceable height to me.” He leaned one elbow on the bar and moved his shin out of kicking range. Crowley was too predictable, it seemed. “Would you like to try it?”

What the hell, Crowley thought. Let the bartender think what he would; he’d have to contend with a pack of lesbians the next night anyway.

“You’d tell me if you had any communicable diseases, right?” he said, taking a sip before Ezra could answer. It was better than the brandy, god damn it.

Without asking, Ezra grabbed Crowley’s drink and lifted it to his lips. “If I did, you’ve got all of them now.”

Crowley blinked and tore his eyes away, but not quickly enough to miss Ezra’s grimace and mutter of, “well, at least we’ve got more tickets.”

“Seems a shame to waste free alcohol,” Crowley said, distractedly. Ezra’s upper lip was shiny and wet, and Crowley fought the urge to offer him a cocktail napkin.

Ezra shrugged. “A burden shared is a burden halved.”

Crowley could not help watching, this time, as Ezra’s tongue darted out to chase a stray drop of brandy from the rim of the glass.

The world had turned upside down, Crowley decided, drinking Ezra’s whiskey. He had stepped into that beige-walled room and entered a universe where this was normal, sharing glasses with another man while in secret bars across the city women in suits just like Crowley’s did the same. Crowley took another fortifying drink.

“You can have _some_ of it,” Ezra said, “but if you want me to drink this you’ll have to drink your share, too.”

“I don’t want either of us to drink it,” Crowley said, but he accepted the brandy again and let Ezra tug the whiskey from his unresisting grip.

“Buck up. Once we’ve finished that, we can do what’s expected of us and order something disgustingly queer.”

Crowley didn’t know when _you and I_ had become _we_.

“The occasion calls for it, you must admit,” Ezra cajoled, seeing Crowley’s reluctance. _What occasion?_ Crowley wondered, grasping for a thread of familiarity in this bizarre circumstance. The occasion of two men alone at a lesbian convention, drinking each other’s drinks under the judgmental eye of the hotel bartender? In that man’s eyes, fruity cocktails would be the expected thing.

Crowley was in too deep.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” he asked, a desperate plea for Ezra to just come out and say it, one way or the other.

“That that man believes he knows exactly what’s happening here? Why should it?”

“To be thought of as – “

Ezra’s smile was somehow, for the first time, condescending. “He can think what he thinks. It’s not as if we’re about to confirm his suspicions.”

 _Just like you won’t confirm mine_ , Crowley thought, with a weary resignation.

“Does your sister know you’re ashamed of her?”

Crowley lifted his head in surprise, jolted from his inspection of the condensation rings left on the table, proof of their transgressive tradeoff. “Who told you I had a sister?”

“Raye did, since you neglected to provide a single piece of personal information.” There was a sharpness behind Ezra’s good-humored words that was almost like suspicion. That wasn’t fair; not wanting to be seen as homosexual by a bartender who could share those assumptions with any number of people was not suspicious, it was common sense.

And he _had_ shared things – or at least hinted at them. He hadn’t said anything about his family, no, but neither had Ezra. And – he hadn’t wanted to have to lie.

“Half-sister, to be technical,” he said. There were some truths he could tell. “Her father left my mother when she was four. Which could explain some things, I suppose.”

Ezra fixed him with a look Crowley had never seen before, a commanding stare out of place on that unassuming face. “Do you really believe that?”

“What?”

“That it’s someone’s fault. That something had to go wrong for her to be the way she is.”

“That’s not what I said.” It was, but Ezra couldn’t be angry at him for that. It was the truth.

“Then what did you say?”

“Only that –“ Crowley paused. They had been having fun, just moments ago, and now something _had_ gone wrong, and Crowley didn’t know how to fix it except with honesty. And honesty did not come easily to Crowley. “That it’s – it’s what everyone says, isn’t it? Broken homes, missing fathers – I’m not a psychologist, but –“

“But I am.”

Crowley would have scoffed, except that Ezra looked so very serious. It was madness to take the word of one man over the entire psychiatric community. And his sister herself acknowledged that their mother’s remarriage had hurt her. But what was he to say, in the face of a man whose research, however flawed, said otherwise?

“She does know. Not because of who she is, but because – “

Because she chose it. Because she could have had a normal life, a safe life, and she threw it away.

“Her husband now is a gay man. She had a fiancée, before the war, and when he got back she said she just couldn’t keep lying anymore. He would have married her anyway, but she… it tore our family apart.”

“You resent her,” Ezra said. As if Crowley needed a psychiatrist.

“I don’t _talk_ to her! The first correspondence we’ve had in years was about this fucking conference. And I wonder – if I’d been here, not overseas, when she was struggling, I could have…”

“Talked her out of it?”

“Helped her through it.” He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face, leaving a smear of whiskey or brandy or both over one cheekbone. “I got home and my parents wouldn’t say her name; took me weeks to figure out why.”

“So you followed suit.”

Crowley huffed a humorless laugh. “Of course I did. You think my parents wouldn’t have tossed me out too? And after all that, she married a man anyway, and they both spend their whole lives lying to absolutely everyone. And I thought – I don’t know. If I went to this convention and told her there are women like her out there who _are_ happy, that would be… _something_.”

The worst thing was that it was all true. Of course, Crowley had not actually spoken to her about the convention, but the thought had occurred, over the past day, and now it was out in the air and couldn’t be unspoken.

“I’m sorry,” Ezra said quietly.

“It’s my own damn fault.” Crowley suppressed his gag reflex as best he could and drained his brandy. “Why aren’t we drinking?”

Ezra cocked a wry brow. “It would seem you are, at least.”

Crowley smiled at him. The brandy burned in his throat in a less-than-pleasant way, but its warmth in his stomach helped to loosen the cold knot of nerves currently lodged there. “Then we’ve got to get you caught up. Two fruity cocktails for two fruity orthodontists,” he said, raising his voice to signal the bartender.

* * *

Crowley, despite appearances, was not an overindulger by habit. So it was with unsteady steps that he made his way from the elevator towards his room, half-supported by Ezra. At some point in the night he had stopped caring when Ezra touched him, and even found he could appreciate it, in certain instances. Like this one.

“This is you,” he announced, stopping before Ezra’s door.

Ezra looked at him in puzzlement. “Do you… want to come in? I don’t think you ought to drink more, but if you want to – talk, and sober up – “

Crowley shook his head violently. The hallway swayed, and he clutched at Ezra’s arm. “Can’t. ‘stoo dangerous. You’re too…” He trailed off, uncertain of what he had been about to say but certain it would have been dangerous in its own right, but Ezra, apparently, had heard enough.

“I understand,” he said, his voice hard, and dropped his arm. Crowley caught himself swaying after it.

“I didn’t mean – “

“Drink some water for me, alright? Tomorrow will be another long day.”

The words were soft, gentle, and filled with a longing Crowley couldn’t interpret. It wasn’t the obvious one, he didn’t think, but he didn’t know what else it could be.

“It’ll be long regardless of what I drink,” he said. “Good night, Ezra.” Then, as his brain caught up with his mouth, “I don’t think you’re dangerous.”

He couldn’t tell, with Ezra’s back turned, but he thought he heard a murmured “but you might be.” But then Ezra said, “good night, Anthony,” and was gone.

Crowley made his shuffling way to his own door, leaning on the beige wall like he had leaned on Ezra’s arm. Slowly, fumbling, he unlocked the door and pushed into his own room.

It should have been a relief.

Crowley had been on edge all day, surrounded by people he had to pretend to like – or try very hard not to grow to like, as the case may be – and one infuriating, ambiguously-queer man. In the solitude of his own room, he could finally drop the act.

And it helped, a little, but his shoulders were still too tense and his heartbeat was still too fast, and all of the loose-limbed drunkenness that had propelled him through what would otherwise have been an equally stressful night had vanished with Ezra’s retreating back.

He had gone temporarily mad. That was the explanation; that was why he had almost accepted Ezra’s offer, aching to find out what Ezra meant by _talk_. It was the alcohol, and a prurient curiosity, the same self-destructive impulse that had led him to get drunk in the first place.

But he couldn’t lie to himself. He had made that decision, when he entered this line of work: no matter how many lies he told other people, he would not deceive himself. The best lies were based on truths.

And the truth was that Ezra _was_ dangerous. Not because he was in any way predatory; he had been nothing but a gentleman since the moment he ushered Crowley into the elevator. He was dangerous because he roused feelings in Crowley like no one had since the war. He was captivating, and Crowley would do almost anything if it only meant Ezra stayed by his side. There were no regulations standing in his way, no blue discharge to remind him why just going along with things was very, very stupid. Alone with Ezra and without consequences, Crowley might make a very bad decision.

It should have bothered him. It was _wrong_. Crowley was not like the people here, who flaunted their difference and boasted of their sexual conquests.

And Crowley was not attracted to men. Ezra’s body held no fascination for him. But the way he smiled, the way his hands fluttered restlessly when he talked, the fierceness in his eyes when he spoke of prejudice and equal rights made Crowley _want_.

Crowley was not attracted to men.

But he was attracted to Ezra.

And he had been unconscionably rude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Daughters of Bilitis, along with the Mattachine Society, were one of the largest homophile organizations operating in the US in the 1950s. Their stated goal was the "education of the variant", mainly through their zine _The Ladder_ , which allowed lesbians in rural communities to connect with the wider lesbian community. They did hold conventions every two years up through the late 60s. This one is fictitious, obviously, but some of the speakers are real.
> 
> Under Senator Joseph McCarthy, and with the support of President Eisenhower, thousands of suspected homosexuals were purged from federal jobs in what was known as the "Lavender Scare". Higher education faced similar purges of professors with pro-communist or pro-homosexual sentiments. The FBI infiltrated homophile organizations and kept lists of their members. As far as I'm aware they never physically attended a convention, but they cooperated with vice squads who _did_ send undercover officers.
> 
> Donald Webster Cory is the pen name of Edward Sagarin, who published _The Homosexual in America_ in 1951. He was hailed as a hero by the queer community, but his views quickly became outdated and he didn't really keep up with the times.
> 
>  _Corydon_ is a book published in 1920 by the French writer André Gide, containing four Socratic dialogues about homosexuality. The character Corydon is a shepherd in love with a boy named Alexis in the second of Virgil's Ecologues.
> 
> Evelyn Hooker was a professor of psychology who published _The Adjustment of the Male Homosexual_ in 1597. [Sappho to Philaenis](https://genius.com/John-donne-sappho-to-philaenis-annotated) is like... _really_ gay.
> 
> American fears about changing gender roles and their effect on early childhood development are reflected in the prevailing assumptions about what caused homosexuality. Absent fathers and overbearing mothers could cause queerness in both men and women.
> 
> Most of my information comes from _Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement_ by Marcia M Gallo, _Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present_ by Neil Miller, and both _We Walk Alone_ and _We, Too, Must love_ by Ann Aldritch. Therese and Carol are from Patricia Highsmith's _The Price of Salt_ , but you might know them better from the movie _Carol_


	2. Saturday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is looooong but I couldn't justify splitting it up, so. (Also I posted it on a Saturday, get it? Complete coincidence but I'm gonna pass it off as a choice.)
> 
> It's very important you know that the soundtrack to this entire chapter is just Carly Rae Jepsen's _Cry_ on loop.
> 
> Historical notes are once again at the end!

_Sergeant Isaacs was not like the other officers in Crowley’s unit. He was young, handsome, spoke fluent French, and liked Crowley better than any of the other soldiers. He was also, Crowley was almost certain, a homosexual._

_“I should have just said I was lavender when they asked me,” he was fond of saying. “Then I’d be safe at home soldering tanks, instead of out here in the mud.” And he’d wink at Crowley and sling an arm over his shoulders, like Crowley was in on the joke. Crowley was never quite sure how far that joke might go, if he let it._

_Crowley could have turned him in. He could have ducked away from that arm. He could have said stop._

_He didn’t._

* * *

Because the world was determined to work against Crowley at all times but particularly this weekend, he once again managed to exit his room at the exact same moment as Ezra. He had thought to head down early to avoid this very scenario, but Ezra, it seemed, had planned to do the same.

Crowley could not face the awkwardness of sharing an elevator with him.

Moving as quickly as his sluggish, hungover reflexes would allow, he stooped to grab that morning’s Wall Street Journal, gave it a wave in feeble explanation, and backed into his room.

Even if yesterday morning’s hallway encounter had turned out not to be a bad omen after all, this one _definitely_ was.

He gave it exactly seven minutes before attempting to leave again. A part of him expected Ezra to be waiting by the elevator when he got there, ready to usher Crowley in with the same mock-chivalry of the day before. But no one was there. Stupid of Crowley to think Ezra would wait for him after being so thoroughly insulted.

It was a day for coffee, Crowley decided, slumped against the mirror as the elevator began its descent. His head ached, the slight vertigo one always feels in an elevator made his stomach churn, and the urge to slide to the floor and go back to sleep was almost too strong to resist. And as an added bonus, wherever coffee was, Ezra wouldn’t be.

The temporary relief of being in a small enclosed space with only himself came to an end, as all elevator rides do, and Crowley squared his shoulders, gave a brief glance back at his haggard reflection and the suit-shaped smudge on the mirror, and stepped out once again into enemy territory.

It did feel a little like surrender to admit he needed coffee to face the day before him, but even the dim light of the lobby hurt Crowley’s eyes, and there was no way he’d survive the fluorescents of the conference room without it. There was preserving dignity, and then there was unnecessary self-deprivation. And Crowley was all about the self.

Tired as he was, Crowley didn’t notice Ezra standing by the coffeepot until he was nearly on top of him.

For a moment, they simply stared at each other, Crowley blinking in surprise and Ezra once again sizing him up. Then Ezra said, “I thought I told you to drink water.”

“I thought you didn’t drink instant coffee,” Crowley said, at a loss. Somehow it managed to emerge as a snappy comeback, and Ezra’s eyes crinkled in one of those suppressed smiles.

“Desperate times. And I didn’t think you’d want to brave the sunlight.”

Ezra still wanted to get coffee with him. After Crowley’s abominable behavior towards him, Ezra had still sought out Crowley’s company. Crowley tamped down a rush of relief and gratitude; _that_ was why Ezra was dangerous.

“Lucky we ran into each other here, then.”

“The Wall Street Journal couldn’t hold your attention?” Ezra asked, all innocence.

Crowley ducked his head, unable to meet Ezra’s eyes. “I was saving it for later."

“A bit of midnight reading?”

“What can I say? Financial news always puts me to sleep.”

Ezra shifted slightly, and Crowley saw that on the counter behind him were two mugs. One contained black coffee – Ezra’s, he supposed – the other what looked like the median amount of cream one might like in their coffee.

“Is that for –“

Ezra colored. “Room service?” he offered.

“What if I’d gone straight to the convention?” Crowley asked, just to play devil’s advocate, but he reached around Ezra to snag the cup that had indeed been meant for him. The stretch brought them closer together than they had been even when Crowley was too drunk to notice it. He did notice, now, how Ezra shrank away from him so that no parts of their bodies touched even with Crowley leaning so far into his space.

Well. Forgiven, perhaps, but not forgotten.

“Then I suppose I’d have put my doctorate to work deciding how many sugars you take for no reason,” Ezra said, unruffled as if he hadn’t just twisted his spine like a cat dodging a hand in order to avoid touching Crowley.

Crowley sipped his coffee and raised his brows. Ezra had guessed right. Perhaps there was something to his methodology after all. “And a waste of coffee, surely.”

“The hotel leaves it out for the taking; why shouldn’t I take as much as I want?”

“I’m beginning to understand your attitude towards open bars,” Crowley said wryly. He took another sip. It really was very bad; not even Ezra’s uncannily accurate sugar-to-cream ratio couldn’t disguise the flavor of burnt beans. “About last night –“

“It’s in the past.”

“I didn’t mean what I said.”

Ezra smiled at him in a way that was intended to be comforting but just made Crowley feel worse. “I’ve found that people are usually at their most honest when drunk.”

“Then I didn’t mean it the way you took it.”

Crowley winced. Ezra looked shocked, then unimpressed, then amused. But at least he didn’t look offended, so that was something. “Quite the apology.” He smiled again, this time to say _let it drop._ “Like I said. Water under the bridge.”

Crowley fumbled for a response. It was clear that Ezra didn’t want to continue the subject, and Crowley wouldn’t have known how to continue it anyway, save _let me make it up to you._ And there was no good way to take _that._

“I have sunglasses in my room,” he said abruptly.

Ezra clearly hadn’t followed his train of thought. “A sensible travel accessory, I suppose. Although the buildings here cast quite a shadow.”

“If you give me a moment to grab them I suppose I could stomach the sun. Better than this coffee, at any rate.”

Ezra’s grin was more blinding than the promised sunlight.

* * *

Sunglasses were a blessing for several reasons. Perhaps most importantly, they looked stylish and Crowley liked the way he looked in them. But more practically, they let him look at Ezra without giving away the fact that he was looking, and that was very useful.

But Ezra was looking too, and perceptive enough that Crowley’s thoughts couldn’t escape his notice.

“You’re frowning.”

“How can you tell?” Crowley asked, knowing it sounded petulant. The promised nine-am shadows had failed to materialize, was all. And his head hurt.

“Your jaw tightens.”

That was… an oddly specific observation. Crowley would have counted it as another tally in the ‘yes homosexual’ column if not for the fact that he had made similarly minute observations about Ezra’s eyes. Which didn’t rule out the ‘maybe homosexual’ column, but that didn’t bear thinking about.

But if it _were_ to bear thinking about, the conclusion Crowley would have come to would have been that _this was not wise._

Sure, a casual outing was the perfect atmosphere in which to coax Ezra’s guard down, to uncover his true sympathies, to _do his job._ But Crowley was no longer sure he wanted to do that. If Ezra was a homosexual – and how could he not be, really? – Crowley was at a moral crossroads. He would have to press harder, follow up, coerce confessions Ezra surely didn’t want to make. Or worse, if he made them willingly, Crowley would have to confront _why_ he had done so.

“Too bright?” Ezra asked.

Crowley tried to smooth out his squint. “Thinking.”

“Care to share?”

Crowley did not, but being open about one’s thoughts was key in getting others to open up. And of the million circuitous routes to obtain the confirmation Crowley still craved despite its dangers, camaraderie was certainly the least morally objectionable.

“Aren’t you worried you’ll be recognized?”

Ezra looked at him sideways, a wry quirk to his lips. “You greatly overestimate my celebrity.”

Crowley didn’t say that as far as the women he had met the day before seemed concerned, Ezra was James Dean. Or Doris Day, he supposed. “I mean that – someone will have seen us leaving the hotel, and they’ll guess why we’re here.” Like the bartender the night before, but without alcohol dulling Crowley’s self-preservation instincts, the prospect was more frightening.

“They might guess why _you’re_ here,” Ezra said, with a glance at the suit which was clearly less serviceable than Crowley had been led to believe. “I’m just a mild-mannered orthodontist who didn’t change his booking in time. No, I’m not afraid.”

 _Worried,_ Crowley had said. It had been a deliberate word choice – _afraid_ felt accusatory, like perhaps Ezra had _reason_ to be afraid. But perhaps there was meaning in the fact that Ezra was _not_ afraid, too.

Then, the follow-up question Crowley should have been expecting, should have been prepared to dodge: “are you?”

Crowley thought about it. There was no reason to be afraid, not really; he wasn’t about to lose his job for being seen at a conference _they_ had sent him to. He rarely spoke to his family, and he had no friends outside of his colleagues. He was safe.

And yet he _was_ afraid, in the same way he had been in the army, that people would look at him and _know._ That they would see him and Ezra walking and assume, and even if they were wrong about the situation as a whole, they would be right about Crowley.

It made him ashamed. So long as no one else suspected it, Crowley didn’t have to think about it, and he could go about his life just like every other normal, decent person.

Ezra suspected, Crowley knew. _What_ he suspected wasn’t entirely clear, but suspect he did. Yet.. somehow, that was alright. It was almost exciting, even, in the sober light of day, when there was no danger of Ezra acting on that suspicion or Crowley on that excitement. It was like being honest without having to do the work himself.

Crowley could see why some people liked therapy.

So it was not without a small thrill that he said, “a bit, I suppose. I don’t like the idea of people thinking they know me.”

“No, I can’t imagine you do,” Ezra said, his soft smile shaded with something like regret. “You can’t expect people not to think about you.”

The implied _I think about you_ was too much to dwell on, even in this impromptu therapy session, so Crowley said, “but I can control _what_ they think. How I dress, where I go, what I drink – if they speculate, it’s because I let them.” It was perhaps _too_ honest, too close to an admission, but Ezra’s words had rung uncomfortably harsh and Crowley couldn’t let them pass unaddressed.

Ezra’s smile had lost its regretful cast and was once again the mild kind that meant he was humoring Crowley. “For someone who doesn’t like assumptions, you do make a lot of them.”

Crowley bristled. “What do you think of me, then?”

Too late, he realized it had emerged less as a challenge and more as an invitation, overlaid with a coyness he had sworn not to employ. Camaraderie was alright. Flirting was not.

“I think you are a man with many secrets. And I think you’d be happier if you shared them.”

Well. He wasn’t wrong.

The walk to the coffee shop was a significant one, but despite his discomfort and his lingering headache, Crowley was glad to be away from the hotel and its exhausting parade of lesbians. Ezra grumbled about missing the first presentation, but given how unimpressed he’d been by the speakers so far, Crowley thought it was more for something to fill the silence.

“You could lose your job,” Crowley said, thinking that perhaps if he rewound the conversation to where it had been before Ezra turned psychiatrist on him, they could take it in a better direction.

“If my research hasn’t gotten me kicked out yet, I’m not sure what could.”

“Tenure won’t protect you,” Crowley persisted. “They fired three professors in Seattle.”

Ezra gave him another one of those odd looks, and Crowley was dismayed to find that he had grown used to them. He supposed if he didn’t like them he should get better at keeping his mouth shut about things he shouldn’t know. It was only that Ezra was so blasé about the whole thing, like he couldn’t see the dangers his social stances could bring, to him and to his friends. Crowley, who spent his whole life assessing dangers, couldn’t _not_ point it out.

“So I should stay silent, just to save my own skin? I should toe the party line even if it means perpetuating a lie?” Ezra sighed, like he was explaining a very simple concept to a slightly dim student. “Laws and customs – those things change. The things we think are constant will seem horribly outdated even a decade from now. 'If my ways are not as theirs, let them mind their own affairs.'”

The words nagged at Crowley. He had read them before, he knew, back when literature seemed a worthwhile pursuit and Wilfred Owen a poetic genius, before Crowley knew the reality of war and that all pretty poetry did was put pretty ideas in your head that meant absolutely nothing in the real world.

“Much good that does these women right now,” said Crowley, the realist. Ezra’s responding glance was thoughtful.

“You don’t traffic much in hope, do you?”

No. Crowley didn’t. _Hope_ was the naïve expression of suspicion, the poet’s realm and not the spy’s. Crowley knew the world too well to hope.

* * *

Complain though he might, it was obvious that Ezra loved the convention atmosphere. To be surrounded by so many like-minded people – and not just in opinion, but in education and approach to the world – must be refreshing.

Crowley wished he could say he felt the same. He had come to the conclusion, somewhere around eleven o’clock, that he could learn nothing more by staying, and that listening too hard to the remaining speakers fell into the same category of _dangerous_ as following Ezra into his room. These people could sway his sympathies, if he wasn’t careful. Or if Ezra hadn’t already.

But he couldn’t _leave_ , not yet, not when leaving meant never seeing Ezra again. Because Crowley knew, now that he had admitted to himself the power Ezra held over him, that he couldn’t continue their acquaintance once this was all over. And he wasn’t quite ready to give it up.

“Are we boring you?” Ezra asked, tearing Crowley from his maudlin thoughts.

“Just tired."

“Didn’t sleep well?”

Ezra knew how Crowley had slept; this was all just a polite fiction to let Crowley save face. He couldn’t find it in him to be grateful.

“Lots to think about.”

He didn’t elaborate. Let Ezra think what he wanted; Crowley no longer knew what lies to tell, and he knew Ezra wouldn’t believe them even if he did.

“Let’s get you some more coffee. Stay here, I won’t be a moment,” Ezra said, with one of those soft touches to Crowley’s arm. Crowley’s skin burned beneath his suit.

Ezra was an enigma in so many ways. He contorted himself to avoid brushing against Crowley in the dining room but touched him without a thought only an hour later. He let Crowley say awful things to him and never took offense, even when Crowley needled him on purpose. There had to be something beneath that unflappable exterior, but Crowley couldn’t find it. Ezra was opaque. That was frustrating, because Crowley was _very_ good at getting under people’s skin.

His hasty departure did seem odd, given how they’d been attached at the hip since they’d met and Ezra’s willingness to return to Crowley no matter how many times Crowley pushed him away, until Crowley spotted the familiar face making a beeline for him.

It seemed Ezra didn’t relish Therese’s company either.

“Oh, where’s Doctor Fell gone off to?” she said before she’d even reached Crowley, disappointment clear in her voice. “I was hoping to talk about his research.”

Crowley didn’t take offense at her complete dismissal. His novelty had worn off overnight and now he was nearly invisible, Ezra’s shadow, hardly worth talking to in his own right. It didn’t particularly rankle; being unmemorable was part of his job description.

“He’s gone to get me coffee. I’m sure he’d be happy to take questions tomorrow,” he said, making a note to warn Ezra of the interrogation he’d just been signed up for.

It was the wrong thing to say. Therese’s face softened and her ever-present smile, when she turned it on him, was indulgent. “That’s sweet.”

Crowley resisted the urge to glance at Ezra, filling a paper cup from the carafe of even-cheaper coffee at the buffet across the room. He didn’t want to give Therese any ideas. Yet somehow, Therese saw and correctly interpreted his refusal to look. Either Crowley had underestimated her, or homosexuals were so used to looking for covert signals that they saw them in everything.

“You don’t have to hide it, here,” she said.

“We’ve only just met.”

Therese snorted delicately, so reminiscent of her elegant partner that Crowley was momentarily thrown off his guard. “And no one can form a connection quickly. You’ve been inseparable since he flirted with you yesterday.”

“I don’t even know if he’s like that,” Crowley said. He hadn’t led himself dwell on Ezra’s first comment on his suit, or his second one. He couldn’t. Better to wonder than have to face the possibilities that arose if Ezra was.

“Have you asked him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m afraid of the answer.”

That, at least, was the truth.

Therese smiled sympathetically. “You’re new to this, aren’t you?”

“To _this?_ Absolutely,” Crowley said, with a wave of his hand to encompass the room. He would not admit anything to this loose-tongued woman.

“You’re as guarded as Carol,” she said with a roll of her eyes, correctly guessing the direction of his thoughts. “She was the first woman I ever liked, you know. I’d never even thought it was possible. But the moment I saw her, I was drawn to her, even if I didn’t understand why at first. Sometimes you just know.”

Crowley’s answering smile was sickly.

He did not believe in love at first sight. He wasn’t even sure he believed in love at all, for people like Therese. But he couldn’t deny that the sight of Ezra making his way back across the room, coffee in one hand and a plate of overripe strawberries in the other, filled him with a relief more complicated than just that of being released from an uncomfortable conversation.

“Ask him,” Therese said, as she turned to go. “And so you know, arriving late, together, says something.”

“We went for coffee.”

“That says something too.”

Crowley turned his eyes back to Ezra rather than answer, his gaze catching on a pair of women standing by the strawberries, where Ezra had just been. One of them looked perfectly normal, if a little younger and more fashionable than the average lesbian, but the other… Crowley had never been on the receiving end of such a glare from someone who wasn’t also pointing a gun at him. He looked away.

When he looked back, the woman was still glaring. For a moment they locked eyes, and Crowley worried she might try to speak with him, but then the fashionable woman put a gentle hand on her arm and the connection broke. She said something and pointed, and Crowley followed the trajectory of her hand to where Ezra still wove his way through folding chairs towards Crowley.

Crowley had no idea what that could be about.

“That was the most frightening look anyone has ever given me,” he said, when Ezra returned to his side and handed over the coffee, “and I fought Nazis.”

Ezra looked back. Both women were now watching them, and though the older woman’s glare had dimmed from _murderous_ to merely _distrustful_ , it was still unmistakably a warning _._ “So did Ruth,” Ezra said, biting neatly into a strawberry and replacing the stem on the plate, and it would have been funny if the woman didn’t look like she could have liberated France all by herself. He inclined his head at her companion. “Evelyn is just worried about me.”

“ _That’s_ Evelyn?”

Crowley had been expecting a conservatively-dressed, middle-class lesbian academic – much like Ezra himself. Evelyn looked to be about nineteen, in the Marilyn sweater-girl getup and ringleted ponytail all the co-eds seemed to be wearing these days. Only her well-manicured grip on her WAC-companion’s arm spoke to any sort of character that might attract Ezra's regard.

Ezra’s smile told Crowley that he had, once again, read every one of Crowley’s thoughts and found them charmingly quaint. “Her dissertation on Donne’s _Sappho to Philaenis_ is one of the most exemplary pieces of scholarship I’ve ever read.”

Crowley tried to imagine that woman holed up in a library somewhere for a decade and could not. “Why is she worried about you?”

“She thinks you’re an undercover officer.”

“I’m not.”

It was automatic, instinctive, and so genuinely surprised that Crowley knew it sounded honest. Of all the reasons those women could have found to be suspicious of him, a police plant was simultaneously nearest and furthest from the mark as it got.

Ezra blinked, looking as surprised as Crowley sounded. “Then what are you?”

“I’m not – you thought I was a cop? Why the hell did you talk to me?”

It was an evasion, as Crowley scrambled to come up with the lie that should have been on the tip of his tongue, but it was an honest question as well. Ezra, who had been so friendly and open with him, had done so believing that Crowley was on a stakeout? Carol’s mistrust he now understood – any strange, unaffiliated man must be considered a threat – but forgiving, trusting Ezra?

Queers are always on the lookout, he reminded himself. They can never fully let their guard down, not even here.

“I don’t believe I’ve said anything to you that would give you cause to arrest me,” Ezra said, with a carefully raised brow. “Please do let me know if I’ve missed anything, but I think you’ll find I’ve been very discreet.”

 _He has_ , Crowley thought dazedly, looking back over the past day and a half. And here he’d thought he was saving them both the awkwardness by not asking – Ezra never would have answered if he had.

It stung, though it shouldn’t. Crowley had done nothing but lie since he set foot in the hotel; Ezra was allowed to keep as many secrets as he wanted. But the fact that he had seen through Crowley’s ruse and saw what he found there to be not worth his honesty hit harder than it should have.

“You don’t have to be – I’m not here to arrest anyone.” He was there to report them all to the United States government, but whatever happened to them after that, he told himself, was not on his hands.

“Then why are you here?” Ezra repeated, pinning Crowley with his words and his steady gaze, and for the first time since he had arrived at this confusing, upside-down conference, Crowley felt guilty for lying.

“My sister and her husband,” he began, hearing the flimsiness of the lie and hating it even if it grew more true by the hour, “she asked me to check it out.”

“Why did you stay?”

Ezra’s eyes met Crowley’s in an unspoken challenge. Too late, Crowley saw that every realization he’d come to, every self-revelation he had thought was private, was in fact completely transparent to Ezra. It wasn’t as exciting as he had thought it would be.

The pause stretched uncomfortably long. “Do I need a reason?”

Ezra smiled, goading, and Crowley’s heartbeat kicked up a notch in an anticipation nearly indistinguishable from terror. “We all have one. Might as well share yours.”

“Maybe it’s not you,” Crowley said, seized with a sudden childishness. Ezra didn’t know him. “What’s yours, then?”

Ezra waved an airy, dismissive, strawberry-laden hand. “Well, I’m giving a talk tomorrow, you see. And they’ve paid for my room.”

Crowley, thoroughly outclassed, retreated to lick his wounds.

* * *

It was awkward, after that. Crowley told himself it was because he was uncomfortable; that Therese’s assumptions and Ezra’s insinuations had discomfited him to the point that he no longer knew how to interact with Ezra – or anyone, for that matter, knowing that they had seen him walk in an hour late with Ezra and come to the obvious conclusion.

But the series of revelations Ezra had so accurately read forced Crowley to admit that he felt guilty. Ezra might not have trusted him, but he _liked_ him, in spite of his erroneous assumption about Crowley’s job. That would change if he knew the truth. He had forgiven Crowley for being an undercover cop, yes, but Crowley was something much more dangerous. Even Ezra couldn’t forgive him that.

Worse, he was now confronted with a room full of women who not only thought him to be a narc, but a tortured, closeted queer as well. He saw a few of them look at him with pity, which was infinitely worse than suspicion. Suspicion he could assuage. Pity he had to endure.

He might as well refute the one he could.

“Ezra says you think I’m an undercover officer.”

Evelyn turned, slowly, to fix him with a gaze not unlike Ezra’s appraising look. Up close, she looked older than her dress suggested, and there was something in her manner that spoke of a quick intelligence and a dry wit to match Ezra’s. Crowley could see why they got along.

“It’s the logical conclusion.”

“I can’t say I like the sob story you must have concocted in your head to make sense of it,” he said. It was easier to lie to Evelyn. “A sad, self-hating cop, tattling on my own kind in an attempt to cancel out my perceived sins. Have I got it about right?”

“Just about,” Evelyn said, unaware of how close to the truth she _was_. “You wouldn’t be alone in that, if it were the case.”

“I don’t make a habit of lying to myself.” Just other people.

“A self-actualized cop, then.”

Crowley ignored the instincts screaming at him to dispute it. Maintaining his cover was more important than convincing people he’d never see again of his heterosexuality. “Do you get many undercover vice cops? You’ve been awfully accommodating, for someone convinced I didn’t have your best interests at heart.”

Evelyn smiled. That was the difference between her and Ezra; while Ezra’s knowing smiles were still kind, Evelyn’s were just disquieting. “You still haven’t convinced me otherwise. And we don’t make a policy of screening attendees. We had one two years ago, but he didn’t cause any trouble so we let him stay.”

Amateur, Crowley thought. Although apparently they’d sniffed him out as well, so maybe he shouldn’t be too quick to judge. Perhaps the government should be _recruiting_ homosexuals rather than purging them, if they were always on such high alert.

“I would have thought arriving in tandem with Ezra would have put those suspicions to rest,” he hedged. He still wasn’t sure if he wanted his own suspicions about Ezra confirmed or denied, but if there was ever someone to nudge them either way, Evelyn was it.

But Evelyn only laughed, which was no kind of answer at all. “You didn’t sleep with Ezra last night.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He would never be so reckless. And he looks too well-rested. You, on the other hand…” Her appraisal was even more disquieting than her smiles. “I hope you figured it out.” And with a significant look over Crowley’s shoulder, she left.

Crowley watched her walk away, even more unsure than before. This convention couldn’t end soon enough.

“She’s very good at reading people,” Ezra said, from behind him. Ah. That was what the look had been about. “Almost uncanny.”

Uncanny was one word for it.

“Are you sure she’s not a psychologist?”

Ezra laughed. “Just perceptive. She’s frustrated she was wrong about you.”

“She’ll just have to live with the disappointment.” Crowley was not about to blow his cover just to vindicate her.

Ezra hummed, and the sinking feeling in Crowley’s gut told him he had convinced no one. “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Figure it out.” Before Crowley could open his mouth to deflect, Ezra said, “it wasn’t the Wall Street Journal that kept you up.”

Crowley sagged. It had been easy to lie to Evelyn, but something about Ezra always compelled as much of the truth from him as he was able to give. “I thought I had.”

“Well, buck up. You’ve got another three talks to ignore; I’m sure you can get some more thinking in before dinner.”

So Ezra had caught that, too. Crowley wished it was acceptable to wear sunglasses indoors.

For the next three hours, he pretended to pay attention to each successive speaker, answering Ezra’s muttered comments when he felt a response was expected of him. Ezra seemed to sense that Crowley was not in the mood to talk and kept the subject matter light and inconsequential. Crowley thought he was waiting for a better time to ask the questions he clearly wanted to ask.

“What do you do, then, if you’re not raiding gay bars?” he said, during the changeover from the second speaker to the third.

“I work for the IRS.” This lie, at least, was practiced enough to come easily even in the face of Ezra’s strange compelling force.

“So I have reason to be afraid of you after all.”

Crowley grinned. “Only if you’ve been lying on your taxes.” Then, hesitantly, he asked, “were you really afraid of me?”

Ezra worked his jaw, choosing and discarding answers, and Crowley knew that whatever he eventually decided on would not be the whole truth. That was a first. He remembered Ezra’s _but you might be_ and thought perhaps Ezra was afraid of Crowley for the same reasons Crowley was afraid of him.

“Not exactly. I saw you trying not to ask, and I figured if you wanted me arrested you wouldn’t have hesitated.”

“You still never said anything.”

“You still haven’t asked.”

But Crowley couldn’t.

* * *

He couldn’t spend another night with Ezra, either, though the understanding light in Ezra’s eyes when Crowley declined a second round of drinks, claiming exhaustion, was worse than disappointment. Ezra had waited all day to ask his questions, and even if it wasn’t fair, after all the effort Crowley had put into uncovering Ezra’s secrets, Crowley was not ready to answer them.

He left Ezra to the company of Evelyn and the knowledge that their conversation would most likely center on him and beat a tactical retreat to the safety of the elevator and his own room. The Wall Street Journal stared at him accusingly from its place on the nightstand as he removed his suit jacket, a reminder that no matter how long he hid, Ezra was still thinking about him and there was nothing Crowley could do to stop it.

His hotel room was sterile, lonely. Crowley allowed himself to stretch out on the bed, hopelessly creasing his suit pants, in the hopes the fluffy down comforter might provide some relief from the tension he had been carrying in his upper back for the past two days.

It didn’t.

In rooms across this hotel, women were getting ready for a night out, or a night in, with whomever they chose to spend it with. Crowley doubted many of them were choosing to spend it alone. He wondered where Ezra was; if he had taken Diane up on the offer of a night on the town, now that Crowley was gone; if he had simply replaced Crowley with Evelyn in his quest for free liquor at the hotel’s expense; or if he, too, had retreated to his room to sulk.

Not that Crowley was sulking. He was doing the mature, sensible thing and removing himself from a situation that could turn compromising. It was the right choice.

Its still didn’t make his back hurt any less.

He fished the convention itinerary off the nightstand and stared at it unseeingly, holding it at arms’ length above his head as if reading it from further away would give him a better perspective.

There was Ezra’s name, in the eleven-o’clock slot, with his two PhDs and his punningly clever talk title. The highlight of Monica’s weekend, and the last time Crowley would ever see Ezra. It had to be.

He would leave, the minute Ezra was finished, Crowley decided. Maybe he could tempt Ezra away for one final coffee; A. E. Device, PhD, would just have to lose them as audience members. Although Crowley almost wished he could stay - _Re-interpreting Sappho for the Twentieth Century_ sounded like something Ezra would love, and if Ezra thought something was worth hearing, perhaps it was. But Crowley knew his time was up.

These past two days had been a time outside of time, where the regular rules of the universe didn’t apply. In a way, they had been the best two days of Crowley’s life. But all things must end, and Crowley had a job and a life and a set of moral principles that didn’t include lesbian liberation. This convention and all that came with it, even Ezra, was something he had to leave behind.

There was a knock at the door.

“Can’t you people read ‘do not disturb’ signs?” Crowley grumbled, but he levered himself upright and slouched towards the door. Maybe he could cajole the hotel employee determined to disturb him at nine in the evening into bringing him some alcohol. If he was going to sulk, he might as well do it properly and do it drunk.

It was Ezra.

Many things warred within Crowley for precedence, but the one that won out was _resignation._ He should have known it would come to this; Ezra was just as tenacious and stubborn as Crowley was. And in a way, Crowley owed him this conversation.

“I have something to say to you, and I want you to hear me out,” Ezra began, drawing himself up to his full height in preparation for what was sure to be a well-rehearsed speech, but Crowley grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the room. He couldn’t be seen meeting with a man so late at night at a queer convention; there was a limit to plausible deniability.

“Did anyone see you?”

Ezra rolled his eyes, and for the first time, it wasn’t fond. “No one cares, Anthony.”

Crowley wished Ezra wouldn’t say his name. When he was working, he was Crowley. _Crowley_ did his job, and did it well, and didn’t question the morality of the job he was doing. _Anthony_ was a person, with feelings, and desires, and the kind of fallibility one couldn’t have in this line of work. Anthony was weak.

But Crowley couldn’t say that. So instead he said, “ _I_ care,” in a tone that brooked no argument.

Ezra shrugged, his eyes falling to the Wall Street Journal and then to the itinerary abandoned on the bed. “I shouldn’t be nervous, but I am.”

There was something cryptic in the admission that promised words Crowley didn’t want to hear. He laughed and said, in a last-ditch effort to stop that train, “I think you could go onstage and quote the Bible at them for an hour and they’d still love you.”

“Reverend Wood already did that,” Ezra pointed out. “But that’s not what I meant.”

Deliberate misinterpretations wouldn’t deter Ezra, it seemed, so Crowley stayed quiet. He couldn’t deal with nerves. He couldn’t listen to whatever Ezra was gearing up to say, not after everything he’d admitted about himself and Ezra had deciphered, not with Ezra in his hotel room staring at Crowley’s rumpled shirt like he couldn’t meet Crowley’s eyes.

“There are things I’ve done that I regret,” he said, still looking at the sliver of collarbone exposed by Crowley’s undone top button. Crowley felt naked, made vulnerable by Ezra’s own vulnerability. The choking tightness in his throat, the entire reason he’d unbuttoned it in the first place, returned. “Things I did before I came to terms with myself, when I thought if I punished others for being like I was I could keep it at bay.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve been the self-hating cop all along,” Crowley joked weakly. Ezra’s words were too knowing, to close to the conclusion everyone else had made and the one Crowley himself had been slowly coming around to.

Ezra’s eyes crinkled, but it wasn’t a smile of mirth; rather something sad and resolved. “Not anymore.”

“Then why are you telling me?” Crowley whispered.

He didn’t know the answer he wanted. Maybe things would be easier if Ezra did know, if the next words out of his mouth were ones of accusation. Crowley could flee the hotel and Ezra would tell no one the truth of why. That much Crowley knew. Or maybe he wanted Ezra to reach into the furthest corners of his soul, to pull out the truth of how Crowley had always been, the part of him that felt more at home among these strange women than he had among his army brothers.

Ezra did neither.

“Because I want you to know that it’s alright not to be alright with yourself. That the walls you put up and the disguises you wear to protect yourself don’t make you a bad person.”

Crowley laughed, but just like Ezra’s resolved smile, it was too raw to be humorous. “I don’t think I’m a bad person.”

“Then why haven’t you asked me the question you’ve wanted to ask me since we met?”

Crowley closed his eyes. He breathed deeply, calming his pounding heart. He was leaving in the morning, and he would never see Ezra again. No one here knew him. And Ezra would never say a thing. He might never get this chance again.

“Because I’m afraid of what will happen if you say yes.”

It was true on all counts, and no matter which one Ezra interpreted it as, the mere act of having said it eased the tightness in Crowley’s throat, as if the secret that had been lodged there since he first thought them to himself in the privacy of his own room, reading poems by flashlight in the dead of night, the sinful knowledge of his own soul, was finally free. It was out, and he could never take it back.

“We’re all afraid, Anthony. All the time. But it helps if you _share_ that fear. Everyone here understands –“

But no one understood. No one _could_ understand. None of the people here – these brave, defiant people, who spit in the face of prejudice and looked the other way when people who hated them entered their most sanctified spaces just to prove they couldn’t be cowed – could ever understand.

Crowley couldn’t listen any longer. His mind was empty, and until he could reconstruct his understanding of himself as he ought to be, he couldn’t let Ezra fill it with anything else. But all his words seemed to have left him along with his secret, so, lacking any other avenues, Crowley did the only thing he could think of.

He kissed him.

Ezra did not kiss back.

Crowley pulled away, mind and heart racing. Had he misread? Was Ezra, after all, just a sympathetic psychologist? Had Crowley jeopardized everything he knew, everything he believed, for Ezra, only to be wrong?

But Ezra’s hands were on his shoulders, grounding him, gentle and warm through Crowley’s thin shirt.

“Do you really want this, or did you just kiss me to see if I’d kiss back?”

Crowley watched as his own hands drifted to Ezra’s waist without any input from his brain, settling there and rubbing small circles into the wool over Ezra’s hipbones. “I kissed you to shut you up.”

Ezra laughed, still close enough that Crowley felt the puff of air on his cheek. “Yes, I can tell that was your sole objective,” he said, one hand sliding up to cup the back of Crowley’s neck, “seeing as how you’ve stopped and I’m still talking.”

Those were not the words of a European academic. Those were the words of the man who had flirted with Crowley the moment they met, who had tried to suss him out with a coffee date just like he was sussing him out now. Crowley had been right.

The question now was what to do with that information.

“This is a bad idea,” Crowley said, his voice more tremulous and plaintive than he would have liked it to be, one final attempt to halt this wave before it swept him away from his better judgment.

Ezra smiled wryly. “Well, that’s a shade more encouraging than ‘this is wrong.’” But his hand slipped back to Crowley’s shoulder.

“Aren’t you going to do anything?”

Crowley didn’t know how Ezra could make a frown look so _kind_. “Whatever you may think of men like me, I’m not a predator. I’m not here to corrupt you or change you. This has to be your choice.”

That wasn’t fair. Crowley had chosen to make the first move; Ezra should make the second. And yet he couldn’t fault Ezra’s logic, frustrating as it might be.

Crowley had the upper hand. One kiss meant nothing, and he could easily deny it if asked. But a man like Ezra, who aroused suspicion just by being himself… Crowley could destroy him.

But Crowley could have destroyed Sergeant Isaacs, too, and he hadn’t. At the time, he hadn’t known quite why. With Ezra, though, it was clear: Ezra, just like Isaacs before him, was so powerfully _good_ that to speak out against him would be tantamount to sacrilege. He made Crowley want to be better.

He made Crowley _want._

“This doesn’t feel like a choice.”

Ezra stepped back. His face had gone carefully blank, but his eyes were unforgiving. “I have done nothing to put any pressure –“

Crowley searched for an explanation, something that would soften the hard glint of Ezra’s stare. He couldn't find one. “Sometimes in war, there are choices where the consequences of either course of action are equally risky. You can only follow your instincts.”

“Are you at war right now?” Ezra asked, raising a skeptical brow, but he did step back within Crowley’s reach.

Crowley took Ezra’s hand. It was the one he had shaken, just a day ago, when he had first looked at Ezra and thought, _I wonder_. It had been a suspicion, a professional interest – but beneath that, a deeply buried hope.

A decade ago, Crowley’s instincts had told him _no._ Not yet.

But now, as he waged a war more insidious and nowhere near as noble, things were different. If not now, never.

“With myself, maybe.”

Ezra did not move nearer, but he tugged at Crowley’s hand until Crowley stumbled forward, close enough to see the azure halo around Ezra’s storm-grey eyes. “Well, as you know, I am a pacifist.”

“Aren’t we all,” Crowley said, and kissed him again.

* * *

Crowley was not as practiced in the art of kissing as one might think, looking at him. He had never really seen the appeal; in Crowley’s experience, kissing was something you did because women expected it. Men, he had always assumed, could take it or leave it.

He had been wrong.

And if Crowley had thought Ezra the kind of man who liked other men from afar and never did anything about it, he had been wrong about that too. Ezra kissed like man who had kissed many, many men before Crowley and didn’t care if Crowley knew it. Perhaps Crowley ought to have objected to being manhandled like that, but Ezra seemed confident that this was the way things should be going, and Crowley didn’t have the experience to argue otherwise.

 _This_ was why women liked kissing. Or rather, _being kissed_. There was a freedom in being conquered, in being guided. Ezra had taken the lead from him and Crowley sensed he might never get it back, but that was more alright than Crowley would have thought it would be, if he’d thought about it.

Ezra’s free hand came up to cradle Crowley’s skull, fingers tangling in Crowley’s hair, and the soft crinkle of gel giving way under his touch was somehow the most erotic sound Crowley had ever heard. Ezra could leave right now, having done nothing more than kiss him, and Crowley’s hair would still be disturbed.

“Always so polished,” Ezra murmured, scratching lightly at Crowley’s scalp and grinning when Crowley breathed in sharply. “What would it take to mess you up?”

 _You already have_ , Crowley thought. But that was too maudlin to say out loud and would probably put a damper on the whole affair, so Crowley filed it away to examine on Monday.

“You’re a shrink,” he said, managing something approaching his usual challenging smirk. “I’m sure you have theories.”

Ezra didn’t answer, but his fingers tightened as much as they could in Crowley’s short hair, forcing his head back and to the side. Crowley had a brief, confused image of Ezra as a barber, directing Crowley where he wanted him.

But unlike a barber, Ezra took advantage of Crowley’s bared neck to set his teeth to it, scraping over Crowley’s jugular and pressing a surprisingly sweet kiss to his adam’s apple. “Do you bruise easily?”

“Do I – surely you’re not –“

It was hard to answer, with Ezra poised over the juncture of his shoulder and collarbone, breath hot on Crowley’s skin where his shirt gaped open.

“I’m testing a theory,” Ezra said, and bit down.

“People will see,” Crowley gasped, in opposition to every cell in his body now focused on convincing Ezra to do it again.

Ezra lifted his head for what Crowley expected was the sole purpose of showing Crowley how unimpressed he was with that. “Trust me, I’m _very_ good at not leaving marks. But if you insist.”

Crowley couldn’t argue with that, especially when Ezra used his grip in Crowley’s hair to tilt his head to the side, took Crowley’s earlobe between his teeth, and tugged.

Crowley yelped. Ezra’s lips curved into a smile against his ear. “And how does that make you _feel?_ ”

“You son of a bitch,” Crowley said, on a breathless laugh.

Ezra hummed, and Crowley was left to imagine the look of studied concentration on his face. “Tell me more.”

“If you think psychoanalysis gets me going – “

“What _does_ get you going, then?” Ezra did look serious, but it was a genuine expression rather than the playful one Crowley had expected. “I want you to like this.”

Crowley swallowed. There was something pleading in that statement, an admission that this was more than lust. There were ideological truths at stake, and Crowley would fool no one by pretending not to see it.

He wanted to like it, too. But as difficult as it was for him to admit, he didn’t know _how._ “This is different than anything I’ve ever...“

“You’ve never done this before,” Ezra finished for him, so matter of fact that Crowley couldn’t take offense. Paradoxically, he thought he might have been offended if Ezra thought he _had._

“There was a soldier, in the war,” he said. “A sergeant, stationed with me near Bastogne. I always wondered, but I never…”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Ezra was a consummate professional, but not even he could pretend to be interested in Crowley’s wartime crush with his fingers tapping a nervous pattern on the nape of Crowley’s neck, not quite stroking but clearly aching to.

Ezra had been Crowley’s lifeline for two whole days, guiding him through uncharted waters. This, now, was uncharted, but not unfamiliar. Time to swim.

“I want to know why people do this.”

Ezra grinned. “ _That_ I can show you.”

Crowley was not expecting to be shoved; if he had been, he would have chosen a stronger stance. As it was, caught off guard, he went down easily, stumbling back until his calves hit the bed. The unhelpful comforter made no sound as Ezra pressed him down into it, covering Crowley’s body with his own.

“I promise you’ll like this, I know you will,” he mumbled, dropping mindless kisses on Crowley’s face, his neck, any bit of skin he could reach. “I knew, when I saw you, or I hoped, and last night – but I never thought _you’d_ –“

Crowley might have been new at this, but he did have one twice-proven trick up his sleeve. So he raked a hand through Ezra’s ridiculously, unnaturally, wonderfully _queer_ hair, pulled his face towards Crowley’s own, and kissed him. Third time’s the charm.

Crowley had never been a particular fan of involving tongues in kissing, but when Ezra traced his along the seam of Crowley’s lips, Crowley opened them without a thought. He had been wrong to have ever thought Ezra mild-mannered. Ezra was _filthy,_ thrusting his tongue into Crowley’s mouth in imitation of an act Crowley couldn’t even begin to let himself imagine. It was not at _all_ like kissing a woman had ever been.

The thought occurred, quickly pushed away in favor of Ezra’s hands undoing the buttons of Crowley’s shirt, that perhaps the difference was not that of kissing a woman versus a man, but of kissing someone you wanted to kiss. Perhaps, the thought whispered, insidious and tempting, Crowley had just not wanted to kiss any of the people he had kissed before Ezra.

Ezra drew back. “Stop _thinking_ ,” he said crossly. “If you have an identity crisis every time you kiss me we’re never going to get anywhere.” He had managed to unbutton all of Crowley’s buttons without Crowley’s notice and now he pulled the shirt open, splaying his palms across Crowley’s chest in a proprietary gesture that should have been emasculating but instead got mixed up somewhere in Crowley’s brain to become the most arousing thing he had ever experienced.

Crowley suddenly, desperately wanted them to get somewhere.

“No more thinking,” he promised, reaching to fit his hands around Ezra’s hips. No thinking about the feeling of Ezra’s thighs straddling his, Ezra’s weight pinning him to the bed, Ezra’s groin frighteningly close to his. Just enjoy it now, and worry about it on Monday. “I’ll save the crises for after.”

“If I do my job right, hopefully we can solve a few of those crises.”

Crowley shifted his hips experimentally, to see if there was any substance behind Ezra’s murmured confessions. “I’m hearing a lot of talk.”

Ezra might have had a retort planned, but Crowley’s experiment had brought his pelvis flush with Ezra’s and whatever he might have been about to say vanished in a gasp.

Feeling another man’s erection for the first time probably should have felt momentous, but Crowley was committed to going with the flow, and with that attitude it became nothing more than the natural progression of things. And then he didn’t have time to think, because Ezra ground his hips down and ran his hands all the way up Crowley’s torso and kissed him again all at once and Crowley made a sound that should have been embarrassingly unmanly but he didn’t care.

Once they were both in agreement that it _should_ happen, everything seemed _to_ happen very quickly. Ezra lost his shirt, through some magic Crowley couldn’t attribute to his own hands, and Crowley’s pants ended up somewhere on the floor at their feet. So much for polished.

Ezra directed Crowley to move up on the bed so he was laid out properly, head cushioned on an unnecessary amount of pillows and Ezra hovering anxiously above him. Ezra’s fingers traced the waistband of Crowley’s briefs, fluttering over his hipbones and across his stomach with a light touch that stole Crowley’s breath. “Can I?”

“ _Please._ ”

The slide of cotton down Crowley’s thighs was excruciatingly slow, but Ezra’s hungry gaze as Crowley’s cock was revealed was worth it. Crowley fought the urge to turn away; he had never been examined so closely and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

Ezra paused, hovering over Crowley like he was waiting for permission. Which he was, Crowley realized. “You’re sure you want this.”

This was the moment of divergence. If they stopped now, Crowley could leave the encounter safe in the knowledge that nothing had happened, even if Ezra made him feel things no one had ever made him feel before. Crowley liked women just fine, or he liked them _enough_ , and he could get married and kiss a woman the way she wanted to be kissed and not think about what _he_ wanted.

But even if he told himself the matter was settled, he would always know that the chance had been there, and he had been too afraid to take it. Self-deception would not change the truth.

The temptation to go for his tried-and-true method of reassuring Ezra was strong, but Crowley knew this moment needed words. “I like it when you look at me like that,” he said, as Ezra’s eyes went hooded and his smiles soft. “I want to make you look like that.”

Ezra’s voice was as soft as his smile, deeper and rougher than Crowley had ever heard it. “Happy to oblige.”

Ezra kissed him with more care than he had previously, as if Crowley were something fragile and in need of protection. He found he liked Ezra’s careful, searching kisses more than the frantic ones from before. He even allowed himself to kiss back, reintroducing some of the techniques he’d picked up from years of necking in cars with girls who didn’t make him feel half the things Ezra did.

Ezra hummed in approval, so Crowley grew bolder, trapping Ezra’s lower lip between his teeth and running his palms restlessly up and down Ezra’s back, nails scratching slightly.

“Are you _sure_ you don’t know what you’re doing?”

Crowley smirked. “Some things transfer quite readily. Some things…” Viper-quick, he snaked a hand between them and placed it over Ezra's erection, hard beneath the wool of his suit pants. “I’m sure I’ll pick up.”

Ezra laughed helplessly, lifting Crowley’s hand to kiss his wrist and down his forearm. “Clever-tongued creature.”

“Only one way to find out,” Crowley said, reaching again for the zipper of Ezra’s pants.

The smile dropped from Ezra’s face and his expression turned shifty. “I don’t want to startle you.”

“I’ve seen cocks before,” Crowley said, knowing he exuded ‘unimpressed’ better than Ezra ever could. “I doubt yours is unique enough to make me swoon.”

Ezra huffed in a way that Crowley could tell meant he was embarrassed, but there was no chagrin in the way he moved off Crowley and efficiently divested himself of his pants and briefs.

Ezra’s cock was… about what Crowley expected, honestly. Not arousing on its own, but not frightening, either. He could tell that Ezra was hoping for a reaction beyond acceptance, though, so he did the natural thing: he reached out and touched it.

There. That wasn’t so different, after all. It was almost like touching himself, only without the sensory feedback. Even so, Ezra provided plenty of feedback, in the way his breath hitched when Crowley slowly stroked up the length of his cock and the way his eyes fluttered closed when Crowley added a twist of the wrist on the downstroke. Crowley squeezed, and Ezra’s eyes flew open again as he let out a pleased little _hmm_.

A shock of cold sobriety went through Crowley at the sound.

Ezra’s cock was not frightening on its own. It was just a cock, like Crowley’s own; a little shorter, maybe, but no more special than any of the many Crowley had seen in the showers back in Europe.

But if they were to continue, the inevitable would happen, and then what? What would the maids think, when they stripped Crowley’s bed and saw the damning evidence on his sheets? Who would they tell?

And how could Crowley go about his day, standing next to Ezra like nothing had happened, like they hadn’t done _that_ , in a room full of people who knew they had?

It was paralyzing.

Ezra gently moved Crowley’s hand away from his cock, where it had fallen still. “Alright.”

Crowley shook himself. “Alright what?”

“Alright, let’s not do this,” Ezra said. Crowley feared what he’d see in Ezra’s face when he looked, but Ezra just smiled at him and settled back on his heels, hands flat on his bare thighs. His cock still jutted proudly out in front of him, but Ezra appeared not to notice or care.

“But you –“

“ _Anthony._ ” Crowley shivered at the name, but it wasn’t a shiver of pleasure, and from the look in Ezra’s eyes Ezra could tell. “It’s alright not to want this.”

“I _do_ want –“ Crowley stopped. Ezra was right. The direction they were headed was too murky; Crowley couldn’t see the end of it, and that scared him. “I want something,” he amended. “I want you. But I don’t… I can’t stop thinking. I thought I could turn it off, but I can’t.”

“Always calculating,” Ezra said fondly. Crowley wasn’t so sure that was good thing.

“You’re not upset?”

“That I got to kiss you and see you naked? Why would I be?” Ezra lowered his brows in mock-censure. “I am a little upset that you lied to me, but I suppose you couldn’t have known.”

 _If only you knew_ , Crowley thought guiltily. That was another reason they should never have gotten as far as they had. “I didn’t lie. Or I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“What is it that you want, then?” Ezra said. He should have looked ridiculous, sitting primly before Crowley with his cock out, but somehow, something in the bright glow of his eyes made it all seem almost _virtuous._ His peroxide-blond hair stood on end, framing his face in the dim glow of the bedside lamp, and Crowley knew that whatever he said next, Ezra would do it.

“I want to be with you. Like this, or any way. I don’t want you to leave.”

He hadn’t put a time limit on _don’t leave_. He didn’t know what that limit would be, if he were to make one.

“Do you want to get dressed?”

Crowley thought about it. Nothing about Ezra’s naked body was upsetting; it was only the potential consequences of what he might _do_ with his body that frightened Crowley. And he liked the idea of being so close to Ezra. Physical vulnerability was _almost_ like emotional vulnerability.

“This is alright.”

Ezra nodded like he understood. He probably did. “Are you cold?”

Crowley wasn’t, but it seemed like the perfect face-saving opportunity to have Ezra pressed back against him, so he nodded and opened his arms in invitation. Ezra folded himself into them, snuggling against Crowley’s side as if they _had_ done what Crowley was too afraid to do and this was the aftermath.

“You’re not as crafty as you think you are,” Ezra said with a laugh, pillowing his head on Crowley’s shoulder. He turned serious. “If you think you’ve disappointed me – you haven’t. I didn’t expect any of this from you, when I came here tonight. I still don’t expect anything.”

“But you are disappointed.”

Ezra smiled a half-smile against Crowley’s collarbone. “Thwarted, perhaps. Never disappointed.”

But of course that wasn’t true, and even if it was, it couldn’t hold out against the truth of how crafty Crowley really was. So Crowley pulled Ezra closer and didn’t let himself hope.

* * *

It was sometime around one in the morning when Crowley brought it up again, the both of them still naked, flat on his back with Ezra curled into his side. Idly, he smoothed Ezra’s hair back and forth across his forehead. “What would you do, if they fired you?”

“You’re still on that?”

Crowley pinched him. “Call it professional interest.”

Ezra threw an exasperated arm over his eyes, but Crowley could see the smile he tried to shield behind his wrist. “Find somewhere else to teach, I suppose. Homosexuality is almost a prerequisite to be a classicist.”

“You know, you never confessed to me,” Crowley said. “After you barged your way into my room to do it.”

Ezra stilled in his arms. “That’s not why I came.”

“You said you had something to say,” Crowley said, frowning.

“And I still do.”

Crowley let his hand trace its way down Ezra’s neck and shoulder, skating across his ribs and making him squirm. “Well, you’ve got me at your mercy, so you might as well say it now.”

Ezra took a deep breath. Crowley felt it along his entire body. “After the war, before I was professor, I worked for the United States military, doing psychiatric evaluations for new recruits.”

Crowley froze. No. _No._ He had thought he was ready to hear this, had thought it was what he _wanted_ to hear, but that was before he’d had Ezra vulnerable and open beside him, before he had admitted to himself that _this_ , Ezra, was what he wanted. And now he couldn’t stop it.

“When the FBI asked me to help ferret out covert homosexuals within the government, I quit.” Ezra turned guilty, anguished eyes on Crowley. “We’ve met before.”

“You knew,” Crowley said flatly. All along, Ezra had known, and he had let Crowley make a fool of himself.

“Not until tonight. Evelyn said it seemed like we’d known each other forever, and I just… remembered.”

“And you still –“

Ezra hung his head, which in his current position looked more like resting it on Crowley’s chest. Crowley’s heart ached beneath Ezra’s cheek. None of this was supposed to have happened.

“I know it was wrong. But I thought, since you kissed me, maybe I could –“

“What? Change me? Fix me? Convert me?” Crowley sat up, cold both with the loss of Ezra and the realization that he had never really had Ezra in the first place. “Get out.”

Ezra sat a careful distance away, nervous fingers tightening on his thighs. Crowley couldn’t look at him. “Anthony, no. I don’t believe you need fixing. I just wanted to show you that it’s alright, if you’re confused or scared or –“

Crowley scrubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t care. Get out.”

“Anthony –“

“Stop _calling_ me that,” Crowley snarled. Ezra shrank back, startled, and Crowley dropped his head into his palms, awash with shame and self-recrimination. _Anthony_ had made this colossal mistake, and Crowley was paying for it. “I go by Crowley when I’m working.”

“So no one can get close to you,” Ezra said, and his voice was so quiet and full of so much pity that Crowley felt like he might throw up.

“Well it didn’t _work_ , did it,” he said bitterly.

Ezra glanced at him, briefly, an imploring look that couldn’t hold up under the icy fury of Crowley’s. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Crowley laughed, a ragged, hollow sound. “I’ve done everything wrong. Since I set foot in this hotel I’ve done nothing _but_ wrong. A credit to my profession.”

Ezra laughed too, until he realized Crowley hadn’t been joking. His tone gentled, and that imploring gaze returned, refusing to quail before Crowley’s tumultuous expression. “I _like_ that about you. I like that you question things, and you don’t do what you’re told.”

“You don’t know what I’ve been told.”

“I know that you’ve been told you’re sick for being who you are –“

“You don’t know who I am!”

Ezra looked down at his lap, the shape of defeat. “No. I guess I don’t.” He smiled a wry smile at his own knees. “Pretty poor showing, for a psychologist.”

All the fight went out of Crowley. There were so many things he could say, but none of them seemed adequate in the face of Ezra’s self-deprecating smile. There was no salvaging this one.

“Leave.”

Crowley could see Ezra start to protest, see the _Anthony_ on his tongue, but Ezra just turned his head away and said nothing. He dressed in silence, somehow immaculate despite all they’d done. He was used to this, Crowley thought, nauseous. Putting everything back in place like nothing had happened. Like nothing had changed.

Crowley had changed. Or he had always been like this, and Ezra had just been the tipping point, the thing worth reshaping everything he knew about himself. He wasn’t sure he could put himself back together.

“Well, I suppose I’ll be job hunting soon,” Ezra said, with a forced lightness. “Change is growth, or so they say.” Crowley didn’t answer.

There was no question of him turning Ezra in. He couldn’t, not when it would raise so many questions about his own behavior. And even if it didn’t, the knowledge that if their positions were reversed Ezra would not take his revenge on Crowley made the thought of doing the same taste bitter.

Ezra stood awkwardly before the door, jacket slung over his arm, shoes dangling from one hand. That he hadn’t bothered to put them back on struck Crowley as indescribably sad. “Goodnight, Crowley.” Then, just before he left, with his back turned to Crowley in a mirror of the night before, a quiet, “get some sleep.”

Crowley waited until the door had clicked shut behind him to sink to the floor. He pulled his knees to his chest and let his head tip back against the rumpled comforter, staring at the ceiling until it blurred.

Tears weren’t the manly, proper way to respond to disappointment. But Crowley hadn’t done the manly thing at all so far tonight, and crying over the end of a friendship was the least of his sins.

He had been wrong to think that Ezra wouldn’t forgive him this. Ezra was the essence of forgiveness, even when that forgiveness wasn’t deserved. He had tried to tell Crowley as much, and Crowley had thrown him out.

But what could he have done? Let Ezra stay till morning, only to snub him later in the day? Make promises to repent, only to turn around and betray them? There was no world wherein this ended in anything but disappointment for Ezra. And Ezra knew it, too; that was why his _goodnight_ had sounded so much like _goodbye._

Crowley only wished he’d said it in return.

Something white peeked out from beneath the bed – the Wall Street Journal, knocked from the nightstand and lost for a time, only to make itself known once again now that Crowley had been brought crashing down to earth, a reminder that the outside world had a way of intruding on life no matter how secure one’s room might be. He pulled it closer and, for the first time, flipped through it. The head of Dearborn chapter of the United Auto Workers was running for the House. Somewhere in Washington, someone in Crowley’s office was already investigating the man for Communist leanings or homosexual tendencies.

Somehow, at some point in the night, the convention itinerary had become wedged between stock analysis and consumer reports. Crowley traced his fingers over Ezra’s name, a sentimental show of weakness, before removing it to crumple up and throw away.

On the reverse of the cardstock, small enough that he hadn’t noticed it before, was a picture of a Grecian woman with her back to the viewer, seated on a phallus-shaped couch. Below that, a poem.

> _I left the bed as she had left it, unmade and rumpled, coverlets awry, so that her body’s print might rest still warm beside my own._
> 
> _Until the next day I did not go to bathe, I wore no clothes and did not dress my hair, for fear I might erase some sweet caress._
> 
> _That morning I did not eat, nor yet at dusk, and put no rouge or powder on my lips, so that her kiss might cling a little longer._
> 
> _I left the shutters closed, and did not open the door, for fear the memory of the night before might vanish with the wind._

Crowley smoothed his thumb over the picture, placed the itinerary back on the nightstand, crawled into bed, pulled the comforter over himself, and did not sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> World War II was the first war in which the US military asked recruits about their sexuality on joining, and later used psychological profiling to catch potential homosexuals within its ranks.
> 
> James Dean and Doris Day were gay and lesbian icons of the 1950s, respectively - Dean for his performance in _Rebel Without a Cause_ (1956) and Day for _Calamity Jane_ (1953).
> 
> In 1949 the University of Washington (go Dawgs) became the first school of the Cold War era to fire tenured faculty, dismissing three professors for failing to cooperate with investigations into their political leanings.  
> Wilfred Owen was the greatest of the "war poets" writing during the First World War. He was killed in action in 1918, a week before Armistice Day. He _was_ a poetic genius; Crowley is just jaded.
> 
> This is the chapter where I _should_ have talked about how gay [Sappho to Philaenis](https://genius.com/John-donne-sappho-to-philaenis-annotated) is; my bad.
> 
> The first DOB conference (actually in 1960 but shhhh time is meaningless) did attract an undercover member of the San Francisco PD, and they did let him stay.
> 
> Reverend Robert Wood was the author of _Christ and the Homosexual_ , published in 1960, and gave a talk urging church leaders to open their doors to queer people at the 1964 DOB convention.
> 
> Crowley was stationed in the Ardennes toward the end of the war, and therefore probably participated in the Battle of the Bulge. But he doesn't talk about it.
> 
> Carl Stellato, head of the UAW Local 600, did run against the incumbent Democrat in Michigan's 12th congressional district in the summer of 1958, but was defeated in the primaries.
> 
> The Daughters of Bilitis were named after _Les Chansons de Bilitis_ , a collection of poems by Pierre Louÿs supposedly translated from Ancient Greek. This poem in particular is [The Living Past](https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sob/sob058.htm).


	3. Sunday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This and chapter four are really a two-parter, a) because they're short and b) because Crowley and Ezra don't actually... speak to each other at all in this chapter? So if you want to wait and read them together, chapter four will be up no later than tomorrow evening; it just needs a bit more editing.

_Crowley returned from war to a home as somber as if he had returned to it in a casket, and an empty bed beside his own._

_He waited a week, as the silence grew unbearable and the fears swirling in his mind ballooned into certainties, before he broke, sitting at the dinner table with its missing place setting. “Where is she? Why won’t you say her name? Is she dead?”_

_Crowley’s father sniffed. “Your sister has fallen into sin. We as a family will not support the life she has chosen to lead.”_

_Crowley didn’t know what sin could be so great to cause the terrible coldness in his father’s voice. “But… surely we can still talk to her,” he said, naïve and idealistic at twenty-two years old. But even as he said it, that chill wound itself through Crowley’s brain and into his heart, and he knew the answer._

_There were limits to how much a person could love you. Sometimes, living truthfully cost you._

* * *

The morning dawned too early, too bright. Crowley unmade the bed in a stupor, tossing the balled-up sheets on the floor of the bathroom. No one ever need know what had transpired in them. No one save Crowley, and no amount of scrubbing could make him forget.

By rights, he should be content. He had given it a shot, decided it wasn’t for him, and come out of it none the worse for trying.

But that wasn’t the truth, and Crowley dealt in truths almost as much as he dealt in lies. Some lies are too grand to maintain, and some truths too great to ignore.

The truth was that Crowley was conflicted. He wouldn’t call it regret, because _he_ wouldn’t have done anything differently. Except maybe throwing Ezra out without _hearing_ him out. But it was Ezra who had ruined everything with his confession, and so all Crowley could feel was disappointment. If Ezra weren’t so unflinchingly _honest_ , if he hadn’t picked the moment when Crowley was at his most vulnerable for that revelation, they could have parted on good terms, or even, perhaps, as friends. With the understanding that Ezra understood that Crowley was not able to give himself fully, the force that pulled them toward each other was harmless.

But Ezra had insisted on honesty. And to be honest, the only thing Crowley regretted was that he hadn’t said it first. Then Ezra’s forgiveness would not feel so patronizing, or his rejection would feel justified, and Crowley could chalk it up as a necessary loss and move on. Like this _he_ was left as the jilted maiden, pining after the lover she had so callously and short-sightedly spurned.

Crowley tried not to mourn the past, as a general rule. What-ifs never got anyone anywhere. The war had destroyed any such sentimentality, and Crowley had turned his back on the bright-eyed idealist he’d once been. Ezra had been one of those what-ifs. So, in keeping with principle, Crowley had to let go of him as well.

He couldn’t stomach coffee any more than he could stomach the possibility of running into Ezra there, but another sleepless night left him slumped once again against the elevator mirror. He’d just have to grit his teeth and drink it, even though the nausea that had plagued him all night still lingered and the idea of ingesting anything only made him feel worse.

Perhaps if Ezra _was_ there they could exchange the stilted ‘good morning’ they should have shared yesterday. Then they could both go about the day and the rest of their lives having closed the door on that possibility. He even half-expected to find Ezra at the elevator, ready to forgive one final time.

He did not see Ezra at the elevator, or the coffeepot, or the breakfast buffet.

It shouldn’t have bothered him. They had nothing more to say to each other.

But Ezra loved free food. And he loved routine, even if he had broken it for Crowley. It wasn’t fair that Crowley, who didn’t even _want_ coffee, had gotten the dining room in the divorce.

And beyond that guilt… he couldn’t _leave_ it like that, couldn’t walk out of Ezra’s life without some sort of closure, even if it was just a ‘fuck you’.

So while the temptation was to head right, out the revolving door and into the too-bright Manhattan streets, Crowley instead gripped his mediocre coffee tighter and stepped into the conference room for the last time.

The room seemed duller, beige-r, muted. The suspicious stares were gone, as were the pitying ones. Without Ezra by his side, Crowley was nothing. A fly on the wall, as nondescript and unobtrusive as he should have been all along.

Without Ezra, the luster had gone out of the whole thing, and Crowley saw it for what it was: a fringe movement which posed no threat to anyone, if only his superiors could ensure that no one heard them. Their posturing and their plans – it was suddenly all so mundane.

If Crowley had been doing his job properly, if he’d resisted the pull of _Ezra Ezra Ezra,_ maybe things would have been like this all along: Crowley, the snake in the grass, learning these people’s secrets in order to undermine them. Crowley, staying the course, following orders like a good soldier. No questions asked except the ones he’d been told to.

But Ezra had called him Anthony, and Crowley had let him. Ezra had beckoned him away, and Crowley had followed. Sneaky.

And it wouldn’t have mattered, Crowley realized, because the questions he was supposed to ask were not the ones he wanted to. _What are your feelings on the Communist party_ seemed so much less important than _how did you know? Why did you choose?_

So he said nothing. And in saying nothing, he learned more than he ever could by speaking.

* * *

Lesbians, it turned out, were not a monolith. This was not a revelation, but a sobering reminder that while Crowley’s job was to paint groups like this with the same brush, that kind of intelligence could never capture the full truth.

He sought out Diane, ostensibly to apologize for keeping Ezra from her two nights in a row. She waved off his apology with a dismissive, knowing smile. Crowley was beginning to loathe those smiles.

“It sounds like he had more fun than he would have with us.”

“I’d like to think so,” Crowley said awkwardly. So, losing his nerve when faced with the prospect of a room full of people who knew what he’d done the night before had changed nothing. He hated to admit it, but his ability to control what others thought of him was slipping. Ezra had been right.

Diane snorted. “From the way he looked at you as I was leaving, I should hope so.”

“Well,” Crowley said, and then didn’t know how to continue.

He was saved from further interrogation by the approach of Monica, the Columbia student who so admired Ezra. Like everyone else. Diane left them to it, most likely bored by Crowley’s inability to carry on a conversation without enough pregnant pauses to keep an obstetrician in business.

Monica, as she explained to him in great detail, had gone to an all-girls’ boarding school. Crowley tried not to make any assumptions about that.

“It wasn’t how they say it is,” she said, over crackers and some unidentifiably bland cheese. “Everyone makes jokes, but as far as I know it was just me and one other girl. And she was a bitch, so I never tried. But it’s nice to be here. I’ve never met so many people like me. You know?”

“I doubt there are any people like me here,” Crowley said dryly.

“One, surely.”

Crowley flushed.

“Adorable,” Monica said, decisively. Crowley did not like that descriptor. “Are you excited to hear him speak?”

Crowley pasted on a smile. “Oh yes. Definitely.”

“You’ve spent the weekend attached at the hip; I’m sure he’s told you all about it already.”

“The topic never really came up,” Crowley said, knowing that ‘evasive’ was the best he could manage but that he had probably fallen short even of that.

Monica’s smile was the gentle sort one gave to soothe another’s mortification, which told Crowley where, exactly, he had fallen. “I’m sure you had plenty else to discuss.”

“Yes,” Crowley said, preparing to flee.

Monica looked at him very closely. Crowley was beginning to suspect that all homosexuals had some uncanny hyper-perceptive skills.

“I get that it’s hard,” she said, and Crowley spared a brief thought to the absurdity of being consoled by a girl barely older than he’d been when he went to war. “But coming somewhere like this is the first step to everything else getting easier. Or at least I hope so.”

“It will get easier,” Crowley said, even more out of sorts in his new role as father figure. “Or most likely. But nineteen is a terrible time for everyone, and everything is uphill from there. Even if this is always hard, the things around it will get easier to bear.”

“What were you doing at nineteen?”

Crowley laughed and shook his head. It was nice, sometimes, to be reminded that though the war and its fallout had never truly ended for Crowley, there were people living now who couldn’t remember it at all. “Getting shot at, mostly.”

“You don’t look it,” said a voice from behind him.

Crowley turned. Ruth stood expectantly, and Crowley realized she had come over not to speak to him, but to sample the disappointing cheese. He grinned at her, gesturing expansively at his torso in what the FBI’s body language experts had assured him would mask his nerves. “No visible bullet holes?”

Monica snorted. Ruth did not.

“Quite fresh-faced, for your advanced age,” she said.

Crowley sniffed. “My beauty routine is impeccable.” He knew he looked younger than he was, but surely not _that_ young. He thought he roughly matched Ezra in apparent age. They had looked well-suited for each other, in the elevator mirror. But mirrors often lied.

“A habit you picked up in the war?”

“You mean to tell me the WAC didn’t have dedicated salons? You were missing out.”

Monica, sensing that the conversation was headed somewhere she couldn’t follow, made a graceful exit, waving her plate of cheese in farewell. Crowley liked her. He’d be sad to see the back of her.

“Too many lesbians,” Ruth said. “Very different from the army, I’d imagine.”

“Very,” Crowley agreed, through his renewed terror. There _were_ women more frightening than Raye, and his only shield had disappeared with the last of the feta. “Not exactly something one talked about.” Unless one was Sergeant Isaacs, who, Crowley understood with a burst of clarity, had been not covertly but in fact outright propositioning him.

Ruth laughed. It was unsettling. “Eisenhower tried to get rid of us, but even he knew when to quit. No dishonorable discharge for us.”

“Sensible of him.”

“Still, it’s good to be out of the government’s clutches. No point in serving a country that would castrate you given half a chance, is there?”

Crowley swallowed, missing Monica, but missing Ezra much more, and differently than the constant low-level remorse he felt just being in the same room as him. There was no shame in wanting an ally for some conversations.

And Ezra _would_ have been his ally, even against an insinuation so on-the-mark, if Crowley hadn’t scuttled that. That hurt. But Crowley was resourceful and not above using other people’s ideas of him for his own gain. So instead of answering, he let some of his chagrin show on his face and asked, “have you seen Ezra? I wanted to wish him luck.”

It worked.

“He said good morning, but I haven’t seen him since. Ask around,” she said, and though the words were dismissive, her voice had softened, turning her almost approachable. Crowley did not feel victorious.

* * *

The obvious person to ask, of course, was Evelyn, but he wasn’t sure he could withstand her uncanny scrutiny. Still, he made his way through the room in her direction, so it might seem that he had come upon her by accident. He doubted she would be fooled, but it was worth an attempt.

Evelyn _didn’t_ notice his approach, but it had nothing to do with Crowley’s sneaking abilities. She was deep in conversation with another woman of about her age, and while Crowley did not know as much about lesbians after two days among them as he should, he knew enough about body language to understand exactly what kind of conversation it was.

An ordinary person might have had qualms about eavesdropping on something so intimate, but this weekend had demonstrated that Crowley’s moral compass was, at best, a little skewed, so he leaned against the wall, affected an expression of deep preoccupation, and listened.

The woman was a friend of Diane’s, he was surprised to learn. Did all lesbians just know each other? She had moved from Missouri to Baltimore for work and was struggling to acclimate to city life.

“Everyone here is all so _glamorous_ ,” she said with a sigh. “It makes me feel inadequate.”

Evelyn laughed, shifting her body forward so imperceptibly that were Crowley not a spy with unusually good peripheral vision he wouldn’t have caught it. The other woman didn’t seem to have. “We all have to start somewhere. You’ll pick it up quickly enough.”

“I can’t imagine _you_ ever being so overwhelmed,” the woman said. If she looked as starstruck as she sounded, Evelyn must be going in for the kill.

But Evelyn demurred. “You’d be surprised. Once upon a time I thought I’d be an elementary school teacher.”

“But you’re so smart, and so talented and well-respected,” the woman insisted.

Evelyn gave a dry snort. “Respected by some, hated by most.”

“Well, _I_ respect you.”

If it were Crowley, this would be the moment to strike. But Evelyn’s voice turned halting and apologetic as she said, “I think I’ve just spotted – I need to go talk to someone,” and she left the woman staring bereft and longing after her.

Crowley was prepared for Evelyn, but still took an effort not to tense in anticipation of her approach.

“You look lost.”

Crowley turned in feigned surprise, ready with a quip like he’d made on his first day, before Ezra had taken apart his understanding of himself and put it back together again off-kilter from what it had been.

But Evelyn’s eyes were fixed on the idly-milling crowd before the small raised stage and her mouth was turned down in frustration or disappointment, and Crowley knew a joke would not go over well. And in a way, he was touched that Evelyn had sought him out as her escape, even if it was only for lack of a better alternative. A little honesty couldn’t hurt.

“I feel lost,” he admitted.

Evelyn twitched her lips at him, barely enough to be called a smile, but when she let it drop the corners of her mouth stayed level rather than returning to their tight resolve. She really was very pretty, Crowley thought, trying to see her from the reverent woman’s eyes, with her dark hair in a perfectly-curled ponytail, coral pink lipstick contrasting with her pale yellow cardigan. Crowley felt nothing.

“I’m surprised to see you braving the throng without Ezra.”

“I haven’t seen him all morning,” Crowley said. He did not say why.

“That I’m not surprised by. He always gets a bit antisocial before a talk.” Her smile was back, twisting into something conspiratorial. “I’ve never seen him so scattered as he is today, though. He must have someone he wants to impress.”

Crowley felt himself go red with shame. No one else had succeeded in making him feel ashamed, but in front of Evelyn, the one person who truly _knew_ Ezra, he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t done something unforgivable. Or unforgivable by all standards but Ezra’s.

Evelyn’s eyes widened, narrowed, and finally lowered in resignation. “Or perhaps he already has.”

“Ezra would never be that reckless,” Crowley parroted. He felt sick again. Ezra was distracted and unsociable because of _him_. This talk was so important, meant so much to everyone here, and Crowley might well have ruined it along with everything else about this weekend.

“There are always exceptions.” Evelyn turned her face back to the stage, the swing of her ponytail hitting Crowley’s shoulder in reproof. “I’ve known Ezra for a decade. I’ve never seen him with anyone the way he is with you.”

Crowley felt worse.

“I don’t deserve it,” he said.

Evelyn hummed. “Definitely not. But that’s how Ezra is. Once he decides to love you, you’re stuck with him.”

“A bit melodramatic, after only two days,” Crowley said, swallowing. Perhaps that was true in most cases, but Crowley had irrevocably fucked things up. Ezra was more forgiving than Crowley could ever have dreamed; it was Crowley who had shut the door on their relationship. And now Ezra wouldn’t speak to him.

“All classicists are romantics at heart.”

Was that true? Did it include Ezra? Had Ezra harbored romantic thoughts of _fixing_ Crowley, making him see the error of his ways, holding him as he cried over his self-preservational sins? Crowley _had_ cried, but Ezra couldn't have held him through that because it was partly Ezra’s fault.

But mostly Crowley’s.

Evelyn, thankfully, hadn’t guessed the source of Crowley’s silence this time, because she said, sounding amused, “I’ll leave you to your thoughts, then.”

Crowley started. Some spy. “Oh, sorry.”

“You clearly have a number of them; I wouldn’t want to intrude.” Evelyn’s smile was not all the way kind. “I’ve got to prepare, anyway. Though following Ezra is always easy; he’s already fired up the crowd for you.”

“You’re speaking,” Crowley said, eyes widening in realization as _Reinterpreting Sappho for the Twentieth Century_ suddenly made a lot more sense. Perhaps he would be sad to miss it after all.

“Anathema Evelyn Device, professor of Renaissance Literature, Marymount College,” Evelyn said, extending a well-manicured hand. “Ezra is one of the few people allowed to call me by my middle name.”

Privately, Crowley thought that with a name like Anathema he would insist _everyone_ use his middle name.

“It’s my mother’s,” she added, by way of explanation. Crowley supposed that _did_ explain it. Though Ezra might say otherwise.

It seemed indelicate to pry, so Crowley chose not to acknowledge it at all. “I’ll be sorry to miss your talk,” he said instead, and meant it.

“You’re leaving?”

“Work week starts the same time Monday morning whether I’m traveling or not,” Crowley said, affecting a reluctant tone. “I didn’t think the government would approve of my time off request for a queer convention. I’ll stay to hear Ezra, and then…”

“Squirrel him away so he misses my talk as well?” she said. Crowley thought she was teasing, but it could have been accusatory just as easily. It was always a coin toss, with Evelyn.

“I wouldn’t want to deprive him of what I’m sure will be a fascinating presentation.”

She looked surprised. “No goodbyes?”

“We said our goodbyes last night, I think.”

“Well, don’t rule it out. I’m sure he’d be sad not to catch you.”

Crowley was not so sure.

It seemed that every conversation today would end in deflection, so Crowley did what he did best and changed the subject. “That woman seemed nice.”

Evelyn raised her eyebrows in a silent _I knew you were listening._ Crowley raised his back. Evelyn sighed. “She was nice. A bit much, but nice.”

“Nice enough to see again? Baltimore’s not so far from Arlington.”

“Your tendency to overhear things you shouldn’t is going to get you in trouble one day,” Evelyn told him crossly. She scrubbed a hand over her face, but when it came away her makeup was still impeccable. Witchcraft, Crowley thought. There was no other explanation. “She’s just so… new.”

“I’m new,” Crowley pointed out. Let Evelyn interpret that how she liked. “Just because she’s new to it doesn’t mean she can’t want it.”

There was no harm in being obliquely honest, he thought. If anyone back at the Bureau thought it suspicious, he could claim he had said it to _allay_ suspicion. That was true, sort of, or true enough to withstand scrutiny. And no one could _prove_ he’d done anything with Ezra, even if someone were to tattle. Crowley didn’t think they would. Being surrounded by such a closed-mouth group of women had its upsides.

Evelyn eyed him consideringly. It was consideration Crowley never would have become comfortable with, if he were to have stayed. “Quite the transformation. Skeptic one day, cupid the next.”

“Change is growth,” Crowley said with a shrug. It pained him to say it, after hearing it so dejected on Ezra’s lips the night before, but flippant had always been Crowley’s modus operandi in situations like these. “You could view me as an educational success.”

“I could.” It was clear that she didn’t.

“Ezra saw something worth trusting in me.”

Evelyn grinned at him, this time sincere. “Ezra sees a lot of things in you I don’t see.”

Crowley grinned back, out of dangerous waters for the time being and therefore free to smile without worrying if he _should_ smile. “I’d say your loss is Ezra’s gain, but I don’t think you’d agree.”

“On which count?”

“Both, probably.”

“If Ezra likes you, I can’t stop him. But he can’t stop me from looking out for his best interests, either, if he’s not going to do it.”

Crowley couldn’t really argue with that, so he settled for charitable misdirection instead. “You should call her.”

Evelyn closed her eyes and recited, with a smile shaded with regret, “ _but of our dalliance no more signs there are than fishes leave in streams, or birds in air.”_

“Donne.”

“You know it?”

“Lucky guess.”

Crowley thought of the maids, even now going room-to-room. Diane’s sheets would not betray her. These women did not have the same struggles as someone like Ezra. They were invisible, ignored. Safer, because of it, but adrift without a community, far-flung and cut off from any sort of acceptance. Stupid, that he hadn’t realized it sooner.

“Just because no one takes you seriously doesn’t mean you should discount yourself too.”

“That makes me feel so much better, thank you,” Evelyn drawled. Crowley would miss her, too. Damn it all. She turned to face him head-on, gaze piercing and direct. “We meet, in places like these, or at bars, or through friends, and then we go our separate ways. It’s too hard to maintain, most of the time. Not everyone is cut out to live life in secret.”

“I’m beginning to see that,” Crowley said quietly.

That was the problem. If this was what Crowley wanted – and it _was_ , if only for the comfort of being surrounded by people who accepted you no matter who you were – he would spend his whole life lying, just like his sister and her husband. Crowley had resented her for so long for that lie; how could he turn around and do the same thing?

This conference had been a mistake. Telling her would be an even bigger one. What was more cruel than a taste of freedom to someone who could never experience the full thing, more cutting than a glimpse of what you truly wanted only to turn your back on him forever?

Evelyn cleared her throat awkwardly. This time, Crowley knew, she had seen it. “Don’t tell Ezra; he’ll only double down on his efforts to set me up with some poor unsuspecting man.”

Crowley frowned. “Does he not know?” Surely he did. Ezra could not care for her so deeply, nor trust her so fully, if he didn’t. Although he had trusted Crowley, so perhaps his judgment was not as foolproof as Crowley had thought.

“I told him I was keeping my options open, so _he’d_ have an excuse to invite them by. You’d be doing me a favor by keeping him occupied.” It was not quite _go to him_ , but it was something closer to permission than Crowley would have hoped for, if he hoped for such things.

“It’s too hard to maintain, most of the time,” he echoed. It was the most truthful thing he had said to anyone all weekend. Strange, that it wasn’t to Ezra.

Evelyn placed a gentle, manicured hand on his shoulder. Crowley’s skin crawled with guilt. “Go home. Think about it.”

“I’ve done too much thinking already,” he said.

“Do you believe she and I could be happy together?” It was a test, and while it didn’t really matter whether or not he passed it, since he would never see her again after this afternoon, Crowley found himself unable to disappoint her.

“Yes,” he lied.

“I’ll call her, if you call him.”

Well. It seemed their relationship _was_ doomed, but not through any fault of Evelyn’s. “You drive a hard bargain.”

“I’m only looking out for Ezra.” Her hand slid across to the space between his shoulder blades and she shoved him, startling him forward. “Go. Listen to your man speak, and then afterwards give him your congratulations and apologize for whatever you said last night.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Crowley said. He would do no such thing.

* * *

Ezra was phenomenal. Crowley had known he would be, from the first moment Ezra had looked him in the eye and said, _do you really believe that?_

Crowley had, at the time. But Ezra was persuasive in everything he did, and public speaking was no exception. If he’s this good before a sympathetic crowd, Crowley thought, what could he do with an unsympathetic one? How many minds could he change like he’d changed Crowley’s?

Well. Not quite like.

He considered following Evelyn’s advice and approaching Ezra to congratulate him, but Ezra was swarmed by fans the moment he stepped down from the stage – including, Crowley noted with amusement and some chagrin, Therese. He spent a moment hovering awkwardly at the edge of the throng until Ezra looked up, caught his eye, and turned away.

No point in trying, then. Sorry, Evelyn.

“So, what did you think?”

Crowley was growing pretty tired of women sneaking up on him.

It felt fitting, that Raye should be the first and last person he spoke to in this room. A hello and a goodbye.

“It was incredible.” _He’s incredible._

Raye kindly pretended not to notice that Crowley was blinking slightly more than usual. Sunglasses, all the time. Crowley was fashionable; surely he could set a trend. “It’s odd to call a man popular with the ladies here, but…”

“A regular Judy Garland,” Crowley said. To his surprise, Raye laughed. He hadn’t made anyone laugh here save Ezra, not a genuine laugh, one of kinship and amusement. Crowley hadn’t made anyone laugh like that in a long time.

“I’m glad we were wrong about you,” she said.

“Did _everyone_ here suspect me?” Crowley grumbled. It stung less, after that laugh, with Raye’s eyes still squinted in a smile. He was no threat to them now, he knew; if he was going to spend his whole life lying, what was one more in the service of equality? If he left with any trace of Ezra in his life, any lingering impact, let it be the memory that Ezra had trusted him, had believed him to be worthy of that trust. To be better than he was.

Raye laughed again, a shade mocking, but in such a way that Crowley felt he was in on the joke, even at his own expense. He had an image of Ezra at sixty, still frumpy and gregarious and kind, and suddenly Raye seemed not so frightening.

He wished he could see Ezra at sixty. If they made it that long.

“Your dogged pursuit could only have meant two things. We were waiting to see which way the chips would fall.”

“Dogged?”

“Puppy dog, as it turned out.”

Crowley personally thought hang-dog a more accurate descriptor.

“So. What will you report back?”

Crowley turned to her, startled, before he remembered his cover story. He laughed, a little too loudly, to cover for that momentary slip. He was losing it, whatever _it_ was. The ability to lie as easily as he breathed, or the will to. “Not much to tell, I’m afraid. I spent most of it with the only other non-lesbian here.”

“You can tell her you met a nice man,” Raye said, with a suggestive tilt to her eyebrows. Crowley laughed again. He needed to get back to work; all his usual deflection tactics had fled him and he was reduced to awkward laughter. His colleagues would never have let him live it down, if for some harebrained reason Crowley told them about it.

Which he would have to, if he wanted to keep his job. And if he was losing _this_ , at the very least he could keep that.

“Some things are better left behind, I think.”

Raye’s sympathy, too, was like Ezra’s. Crowley saw how young women like Monica might flock to her as a stand-in for the mothers who had shunned them, and felt silly for disliking her simply for playing mama bear. “Sometimes two people can be meant to meet, but the time isn’t right.”

Crowley had spent his entire adult life waiting for the _right time_. And, so far, it had netted him nothing but heartbreak. “Will it ever be the right time?” he asked, plaintive though he didn’t mean to be, “for people like…”

He couldn’t say _us._ It didn’t matter whether it was a lie or the truth; it was too much. This life, this out-and-proud life, was not for Crowley. Crowley belonged in the shadows, in his shadowy job and his solitary existence outside of it.

“It can be, when we’re the right people.”

Ezra was the right person, Crowley thought. Ezra was phenomenal, and incredible, and perfect in every way Crowley had seen so far. It was Crowley who wasn’t right for him. That would have to be his consolation; that in leaving he was freeing up Ezra to find some other man who deserved him more, who Evelyn liked and who didn’t disappoint him over and over again.

“Poetic. If you’ll excuse me,” he said, and fled.

* * *

Alone in his hotel room for the last time, Crowley stood before the stripped bed and tried to put himself back together, like he had watched Ezra do so methodically. But he did not have the years of practice Ezra must – or perhaps the first time was the hardest, and everything after that became routine.

But this was not the _first_ of anything. It would be the _only_ time. Crowley had tried, and in the end, he hadn’t been able to do it. Not every man would be so understanding as Ezra. Crowley had missed his chance. The time hadn’t been right.

But whatever his feelings might have been, whatever opportunities might present themselves in the future, he would not take it again.

He tried to look at the room through a stranger’s eyes. It was mundane, ordinary, unmemorable. To the unenlightened eye, it looked as though nothing had transpired. And nothing had. Crowley would will it so, would repress until the memory of this weekend was as distant as his memories of the war, sanitized and defanged. He would go back to his job, and he would fabricate a story of this weekend which conformed to the story he was expected to tell, and no one would ever know.

And he would try not to regret it.

The convention itinerary lay innocuous on the bedside table, left there by some maid who had deemed it worthy of saving when she took the unread copies of the Wall Street Journal with her. Crowley stared at it for a long time.

_For fear the memory of the night before might vanish with the wind._

But that was as it should be, wasn’t it? These things could not survive in the sunlight. And though Crowley walked in the shadows, Ezra did not, and Crowley could not ask him to.

It would have been a nice souvenir, something to put in a box of keepsakes and look at every now and then, if he was moving or de-cluttering or simply feeling maudlin. But that was too dangerous, too. Let the maids take it and erase it and the memories it held.

He turned away, shrugging out of his suit jacket, already dreading the three-hour flight ahead of him and the havoc it would play on his already-tense shoulders. Something fluttered to the ground.

It was a drink ticket, stuffed into his pocket at some point in the course of Friday night and forgotten, a crumpled reminder of the camaraderie and ease he had felt before he went and ruined everything. Garbage; a crumpled square of paper with no more value than a used carnival ticket. He should throw it away.

As souvenirs went, it was a pitiful one. But he placed it back in his pocket anyway, folded the jacket into his suitcase, and walked out the door.

Though Crowley would have preferred a day to match his mood, the bright sun of the street outside the hotel did go a ways towards lifting his spirits. This was the real world; in the light of day it was easier to forget the fluorescent wonderland and the lamplit nights of the weekend. On Monday he would be in Virginia, with its three-story buildings and the Potomac glistening next door, and all this would seem like a dream.

“Leaving so early?”

If Crowley had been expecting Ezra, he would have been disappointed. As it was, he was merely surprised. Of all the people he could have expected for a bon voyage party, Carol was not one of them.

“Have to catch a flight home,” he said.

“I’d have thought you’d be heading back with Ezra.” She lounged against the dirtied stone wall of the hotel as if it were marble, cigarette dangling from her fingers. Crowley envied her poise.

“Well, we are on different flights, seeing as how we hadn’t met when we booked them,” he said, reaching for it.

Carol pushed herself off the wall and stubbed out her cigarette.

“Quite the connection you two made in only two days.”

It was the most common of the sentiments Crowley had heard expressed about his relationship with Ezra, but hearing it from Carol’s lips brought back to mind the first person who had said it. Carol was as pragmatic as Therese was romantic; surely she would see things with a clearer eye.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” he asked, as if out of academic curiosity.

Carol pursed her lips. Crowley was surprised to see that she was genuinely considering her answer. “Therese does. I believe in… possibilities. Not a flame, but a spark, and you can choose to fan it or not.”

“That’s an interesting philosophy.” He wasn’t sure he liked it any better than Raye’s.

“What did you choose?” Crowley hesitated, unsure of how to say that he had chosen nothing, that everything he had done had felt like the natural consequence of the action before it, or that he would have been too paralyzed to do anything given the _opportunity_ to choose. Carol scoffed. “I don’t expect you to be honest with me. If you can’t be honest with yourself, what hope do we mere mortals have?”

Out of everyone he had met over the course of this convention, Carol was the person whose good opinion he had always known he had no hope of winning. That made it easier to be truthful.

“I’ve… been more honest than I should have, I think.”

Carol tossed her head, golden hair following in a wave worthy of a curler commercial. “An honest life is the only kind of life worth living.”

The incongruity of it startled a laugh out of Crowley. “That’s never really been in the cards for me.”

“It should be.” She waved a hand towards the glass doors and the room beyond them, full of people Crowley was leaving behind. “What do you think this is all for? A social club? This is about creating a world we can _all_ live in. You included, much as it pains me to include you. If you remember one part of this weekend, let it be that.”

A subversive social movement, or the imprint of Ezra’s lips on his neck? A difficult choice. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget this,” he said, an admission and a hedge all at once. “Even if I wanted to.”

Carol’s icy-blue gaze caught and held him. “Then remember this: we helped you, when we had no obligation to. We welcomed you, and we taught you, and if you learned anything at all, don’t leave us behind when you leave here. We are _people_ , in our own right, and we didn’t plan this convention to teach you personally a lesson.”

“What do you want me to do?” It came out plaintive, almost whiny, and Crowley hated himself for it. But what _could_ he do? The best course of action was to do _nothing_ , and in doing nothing do no harm. That was a sad thought.

“I’m not your mother; figure it out yourself. But you can start by not breaking my partner’s heart by breaking Doctor Fell’s,” Carol snapped. Crowley blinked. She continued, more patiently, “I don’t like you. But something just aren’t worth fighting for, after a while.”

“Then why are we all here?”

“Because some things _are_ worth fighting for. And happiness is one of them.”

All through the cab ride to the airport, the three hour flight, and the cab ride home, Crowley thought about that. He thought about it as he walked in to work Monday morning, and as he repeated the same half-truths to every subsequent person who asked about his weekend.

What was worth fighting for?

What made him happy?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much to say, except that Eisenhower (anecdotally) did try to purge the WAC of lesbians under orders from President Truman in 1947. A former WAC officer named Johnnie Phelps claimed to have been called in by Eisenhower to report on the lesbian situation and to have told him that if he were to remove lesbians from the WAC, the first name on the list would be hers.
> 
> Judy Garland was a touchstone for gay men, to the point where "friend of Dorothy" became a coded term for a gay man. Garland was a lifelong supporter of the queer community, and the film she's best remembered for, _The Wizard of Oz,_ has been read as a queer allegory since the time it was published in book form. Ezra is the lesbian's Judy Garland.


	4. Some Future Monday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What? A timely update? From me? You never dreamed it would happen, and neither did I, but here we both are.
> 
> Thanks so much for going on this ride with me! I definitely learned a lot and hope you did too. If you thought this time period or the people involved in it were interesting, I highly recommend checking out the books I mentioned in the notes for the first chapter. This era of queer history often gets swept under the rug and it's important to remember the people fighting for our rights _before_ Stonewall.
> 
> But if you _do_ do outside research, please forgive all the things I fudged to make this story work ;)

_Crowley’s favorite nights were the ones he and Sergeant Isaacs spent together, alone. Then they would talk of their childhoods, the girls they had left behind, their hopes for their return._

_“Things will be different, when we go home,” Sergeant Isaacs would say, and each time he did it sounded less like certainty and more like resignation._

_“And if we don’t go home?”_

_Sergeant Isaacs would stretch, and on the cramped bench his arm would come around Crowley’s shoulder for the briefest instant. “I’ve thought about that. Mightn’t it be better to die out here a hero than back there a pariah? Knifed in some back alley because someone saw something he didn’t like?”_

_Crowley had no answer for that, but if he could have, he would have said no. No, living in fear was always better than not living at all. One did what one had to survive._

_Crowley watched them carry Isaacs away, bloodied and still, and thought,_ at least it’s what he wanted.

* * *

Crowley had never had occasion to visit Marymount College before, but his initial impression was that the alumni magazine must feature a lot of glossy photos of campus in the autumn. He might be persona non grata there – only time would tell – but there was nothing like Arlington in full fall colors.

He had thought, in the month and a half of questions and fabrications and reports, that he would have little time to think of Ezra.

He had been wrong.

Ezra haunted him, with every recounting of the presentation lineup or accounting for their evening at the bar. He haunted Crowley in Crowley’s careful dance around the name Anathema, in his sudden memory lapses and temporary failures of social skills. He haunted Crowley’s working hours, his leisure hours, his sleeping hours.

Many things fade with time. After long enough, most memories blur into harmless nostalgia. Crowley could think fondly of Sergeant Isaacs with only a twinge of pain. His ghost had been replaced with Ezra’s.

So the second week of October found Crowley, after eighteen years away from it, back at school.

Officially, school had been in session for a month, but Crowley had been determined to tie up as many loose ends as he could before his visit. It turned out that he had depressingly little to tie up, so by the time October rolled around he could find no more excuses to put it off. Crowley might have been cautious, might have been prone to overthinking, but he was not a coward. There was no point in waiting for the perfect time, so long as Crowley himself was ready.

The literature and classical studies building was Labyrinthine – fitting, Crowley supposed. When he had finally gotten so turned around as to find himself back in the foyer and not even positive he was still on the same floor he had started out on, he was forced to admit defeat.

He spotted and flagged down a student headed for the staircase up to either the second floor or the third, depending on exactly how lost he had gotten.

“What can I help you with?” the boy asked, eyeing Crowley up and down as if he suspected Crowley was in the wrong building. Perhaps Crowley’s understanding of what constituted ‘business casual’ needed reexamining.

“Do you know Professor Fell?”

“I’m one of his teaching assistants.”

The boy looked inordinately proud of what was essentially a jumped-up secretary job. A graduate student, then. A bright-eyed MA candidate who probably worshiped the ground on which Ezra trod. Crowley could imagine Ezra, leading a little group of twenty-somethings like ducklings, all hanging off his every compelling word. It seemed his draw was not restricted to lesbians and Crowley.

“Could you direct me to his offices? And perhaps tell someone this building needs better signage.”

The boy jutted out his chin mulishly. “What do you want with him?”

“Pardon?”

“What do you want with him?” the boy repeated. “Professor Fell is a good man; he doesn’t need any trouble.”

Crowley frowned. The boy’s loyalty was sweet, but baffling. Crowley posed no threat. He was as harmless as an orthodontist, even if he still didn't look like one. “What makes you think I want to make any trouble for him?”

“You look like a government-type. We’ve had government-types sniffing around here before, and they’ve never found anything. So you don’t need to waste your time.”

“I’m not _sniffing_ anything,” Crowley said. What was it with people and dog metaphors when it came to him and Ezra? “And since when is it a crime to work for the government?”

The boy squinted like he thought it _should_ be a crime, but relented with a grudging, “what _do_ you want with him, then?”

Crowley hesitated. He couldn’t come out and say it, couldn’t even _hint_ at it; this boy seemed fiercely loyal to Ezra now, but boys got drunk at college parties and spread rumors they shouldn’t. And Crowley hadn’t thought to prepare a lie beyond ‘he’s a friend.’

“He’s a friend.”

The voice was accompanied by the click of kitten heels down the tiled hallway, and a long-fingered, manicured hand landed on the boy’s shoulder. “At ease, Brian. I know him.”

“Ev – Professor Device,” Crowley said, startled into rudeness. His hope to sneak in and out with no one’s notice had been, it seemed, a futile one.

Brian’s eyes flickered back and forth between them, caught in the two horrific student realizations of ‘professors have friends who aren’t other professors’ and ‘professors have middle names.’ Crowley felt an entirely disproportional satisfaction at having caused them. Served him right, the little suspicious upstart. Ezra could protect himself.

Evelyn smiled. “Government man.”

Crowley didn’t hang his head, but it was a near thing. “I’m here to see Professor Fell.”

“How devastating, when I thought you were here to see me,” Evelyn teased. Crowley saw Brian’s eyes widen even further in a ‘professors _flirt?’_ That was very well misdirected, he thought. She would have made a good spy. 

Evelyn looked closer, that patented cunning gaze stripping Crowley bare and exposing every intention he had hoped to hide. She spoke again, and Crowley was reminded, oddly, of Carol. “So you did listen to me.”

Crowley laughed ruefully, running a hand through his hair. It didn’t much matter if it was mussed, now. “I listened to all of you. That was part of the problem.”

“You didn’t call.”

“I came by in person. Your move.”

Evelyn sized him up, much more successfully and unnervingly than Brian had. Then she nodded, as if she had come to a decision. “He has open office hours until four,” she said, pointing to a door two floors up, just visible through the stairwell.

“But – “ Brian began.

Evelyn tightened her grip on his shoulder. “Do you have ambitions to be a security guard, Brian?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I seem to recall you saying in your last draft that the inalienability of the individual lived experience was central to our understanding of Montaigne.”

“You marked me down for that.”

“Walk me back to my office and you can try to change my mind,” Evelyn said, already steering him away down the hall by the shoulder. Brian looked back at Crowley, and the stairs, helplessly.

“But I was going to see –“

"He's busy." And then they were gone down the corridor, as Brian's backwards glance shifted from one suspicion to another, more frightening one.

So Crowley had no more barriers to seeing Ezra – and something like tacit permission from Evelyn, which meant more than he would have thought, three months ago. He hoped Ezra would see it that way.

* * *

Following Evelyn’s vague directions, Crowley found his way to Ezra’s office with only a few wrong turns. The extra five minutes gained by backtracking to the last recognizable landmark, unfortunately, still had not given him enough time to prepare himself to knock on Ezra’s door. But he’d come all this way, so, for lack of a better opener, he rapped out the first five beats of ‘shave and a haircut’ just beneath the gold plaque bearing Ezra’s name. “It’s open, come in,” was the distracted reply.

The speed at which Crowley opened the door felt faintly ridiculous, but it also felt impolite to just yank it open without giving Ezra a chance to change his mind about inviting Crowley in.

“Hello,” he said, peeking his head through the half-open door. “May I come in?”

“Yes, of course, it’s open office –“ Ezra turned from whatever he’d been fiddling with on his desk, back to Crowley, and froze. He went to wipe his hands nervously on his thighs, and Crowley saw the ink smeared across his palms just as Ezra realized it, too, and let them drop to his sides. “Anthon – Crowley. To what do I owe the pleasure? Should I be packing my things?”

If it was supposed to be a joke, it was a feeble attempt. _This_ was what Ezra thought of Crowley, and he had every right to. Crowley had done neither of them any favors coming here.

“This is a social visit,” Crowley said, words clumsy in his mouth. It had been nearly two months, but the sight of Ezra with his shirtsleeves rolled up, hair disheveled, was familiar as it had been the evening of their goodbye. If Ezra saw him staring, he said nothing.

Ezra did not ask him to leave, but he didn't look altogether thrilled to see him, either. His voice, manner, and expression were all blandly polite. “Did you find your way without too much trouble? The stairs can be challenging.” Crowley thought he would have preferred anger.

“Evelyn gave me directions,” he said, choosing not to mention that the stairs had been challenging even with Evelyn’s help.

Ezra’s face twisted in a grimace. “Of course she did,” he said, turning his back on Crowley to rummage for a rag to clean his hands. Crowley wondered what kind of conversations they’d been having about him, to provoke that reaction.

“I had to make it past your guard dog first,” Crowley offered. It seemed the dog metaphors were catching. “Bit yappy, but loyal.”

One corner of Ezra’s mouth quirked. “Which one?”

“Brian, I think Evelyn said his name was.”

The quirk lifted into a smile. Crowley couldn’t decide whether to be pleased that Ezra was smiling in his presence, or disappointed that it wasn’t because of Crowley himself. “Ah, yes. I have three, but Brian is the most… fervent.”

“Some lord of the fallen you are, if your Cerberus is so easily evaded,” Crowley said, and there, _that,_ was a smile he had caused. “You inspire loyalty in everyone, it seems.”

“That’s one word for it.” Ezra groped for something on the cabinet behind him and produced a 45, still in its sleeve, with a note stuck to it reading, _here’s to a great term together, Professor – Brian._

Crowley whistled. “Jimmie Rodgers. Subtle.”

Ezra looked like he wanted to smile again but couldn’t bring himself to mock a student. “Not everyone is as hard to read as you are.” Then he did smile, slyly, and added, “I’m surprised you caught the reference.”

“One picks things up,” Crowley said airily. It seemed the conversation was heading toward safer ground, implausible as that was. If he could keep it light, mayb things would work out alright.

Ezra set the record down, smile fading. “Since you’re not here on official business, I suppose I can assume I inspire loyalty in you, too.”

Crowley looked down, unable to answer for chagrin. There was still a spot of black on Ezra’s wrist. _Light,_ he thought. “What’s with the ink?”

“The ribbon’s caught,” Ezra sighed, indicating the typewriter behind him. “I’ll have to call Engineering to fix it.”

“You need an engineer to fix your typewriter?”

For a moment, Ezra looked embarrassed, biting his lip in a way so distracting Crowley almost missed his explanation. “Once I week I call over Doctor Pulsifer from the engineering department to look at something in my office, and then I send him on an errand to Evelyn before he leaves.”

Crowley wanted to grin; only years of training allowed him to affect an air of confusion and say, “I thought Evelyn was –“

“Oh, probably. But then she has a strong relationship with her mother, so I’m sure everything’s very proper and normal.”

It was probably a lie, but it was also a targeted jab that Crowley knew better to engage with.

“How do you ensure that something breaks every week?”

“Well, this time I jammed the ribbon myself,” Ezra said, looking so slyly proud of himself that Crowley could have kissed him right then, “hence the ink. I’m afraid he thinks me completely technologically inept.”

“All in the service of love, though,” Crowley said. _All classicists are romantics at heart,_ Evelyn had said. Big declarations, as much as he hated them, were the way to go. And _light_ could never carry him that far. He took a breath. “I wanted to apologize.”

Ezra was suddenly very busy with straightening the papers on his desk, separating the ink-stained ones from the clean. “I won't accept it. I misread a situation, and you asserted your boundaries. There's nothing to apologize for.”

“Yes, there is.” Crowley said, heartrate still coming down from the frantic spike it had taken at Ezra's first words. He took a step into the room, shutting the door behind him. “I’m sorry for not saying goodbye.” Another step. “I’m sorry for making you think your job was in jeopardy.” Another step. “I’m sorry for not being honest with you.”

Ezra laughed nervously, eyes trained on Crowley’s approach. “I’ve said, Crowley, I forgive –“

“Not about that. Although I’m sorry about that, too. But you asked if I wanted to talk, and I didn’t. And I should have.”

Ezra settled back carefully, perched on the edge of his desk with both feet planted on the floor, ready to flee. “Alright.”

He didn’t ask again, which Crowley appreciated. He wanted to say this without prompting, without hand-holding. He wanted it to be his choice.

“The sergeant I mentioned – he was killed,” he said, looking Ezra directly in the eyes because if he looked anywhere else he wouldn’t be able to speak. “Or I think he was. I saw them carry him away, but I never – I never went to check. It was easier to mourn him than face the possibility of –“ His words choked off.

“Of confronting what might be between you if he lived,” Ezra finished.

“He said it was what he wanted. Better to die out there among brothers than come back here and lose everyone he knew anyway. I didn’t understand it, then. But then I came back and my best friend was gone and everyone acted as if she _had_ died.”

Crowley swallowed. He had never admitted this to himself, always shied away from it because it threatened to upend everything he had believed about right and wrong. But Ezra had already done that, so there was no reason not to say it now. “I think – I think I decided he was dead because it hurt less than to imagine him going through what she went through, or worse, that he might – his greatest fear was that – people are cruel, and you can be the most, the worthiest person, and you can still die just because someone hates what you stand for.”

He wasn’t talking about the war. He hoped Ezra heard it.

Ezra eyed him levelly. When he spoke, it was not the reply Crowley had expected. “And what do you stand for?”

Crowley laughed, a release of tension more than amusement. “Myself, mostly. But lately… whatever you stand for, I think.”

“Not the memory of J. Edgar Hoover?” Ezra’s tone was light now, as if the answer didn’t matter to him at all. Crowley knew he was lying.

“I’ve never been a lock-step kind of guy. It’ll be my downfall one of these days."

But neither was Ezra. Crowley thought he might be alright with that fall, if Ezra was by his side for the landing.

Ezra was silent again. Then, finally, quietly, he asked, “why did you come here?”

Crowley tore his gaze from Ezra’s and turned his head, biting his lip and searching for anywhere else to look. He stuffed his hands in his pockets so Ezra wouldn’t see them tremble.

“I was hoping I could inquire about a position in the classics department.”

There was a silence longer than any so far.

“You lost your job.”

Crowley huffed a helpless laugh. After all the courage it had taken to say it, _that_ was Ezra’s takeaway? “Hard not to, after they strapped me to a lie detector and asked me about you.”

“Anthony, I’m sorry, I –“

“I wouldn’t have come here if I was mad at you.”

“What are you, then?” Ezra asked, cautiously, carefully, a faint echo of _do you want to talk about it?_ Then, Crowley hadn’t. The timing, and he himself, had not been right. But Raye had been right, and if Evelyn was too, then perhaps now they were both the people they needed to be.

“Adrift. Soon-to-be destitute. Hoping you might accept me as a trophy wife.” He laughed, self-consciously, but Ezra’s careful expression didn’t change. “I’m sorry. I was afraid. And I’m sorry I didn’t make this choice on my own and I had to get blacklisted by the US government to do it. But it is my choice, and I do want it, so. I came here.”

Ezra smiled at him, gentle and fond, and Crowley’s chest went tight with a new anxiety; that of laying one’s heart at someone’s feet to see if it will be picked back up. “We’re all afraid, Anthony. But someday, I hope we won’t have to be.”

Crowley felt a tentative grin spread over his face. “I really do prefer Crowley. But I suppose there are always exceptions.”

“Not calling you by your spy codename in bed is one of them, surely.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s an I’m willing to try.” Ezra paused, mischief in his storm-blue eyes and those delightful, beloved crinkles at their edges. “So long as you promise not to run screaming at the sight of my cock.”

“I did not _run.”_

“Like a startled baby deer.” Ezra sobered, suddenly unsure of himself. “You don’t have to – just because I’m the first man you – there’s a whole world out there, and if all you want is a guide, I’m perfectly –“

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Crowley informed him, and did.

It was oddly chaste, with his hands still in his pockets like a schoolboy and Ezra’s smile against his closed lips, but it was magnitudes better than anything they had shared before. This time, Crowley wasn’t afraid.

“You can’t just kiss me every time I say something you don’t agree with.”

Crowley raised an arch, teasing brow. “Can’t I?”

“The novelty will wear off eventually.”

“We’ll just have to test it,” Crowley began, but it was Ezra then who took the opportunity to shut him up, arms coming to wrap around Crowley’s shoulders like they _were_ high school sweethearts, tilting his head to catch Crowley’s lips in a gentle kiss. The only natural thing to do was to take his own hands form his pockets and wind them back through Ezra’s hair where they so clearly belonged.

Ezra pulled away, disentangling them and smoothing down his hair, leaving a small smudge of black beside his ear. Crowley wanted to lick it. “I see that having you in my place of work could be dangerous,” he said wryly. “I know I cost you your job, but do try not to cost me mine.”

Ezra was probably correct, since all Crowley wanted to do was ruffle that silly hair all over again, no matter who might see it and question it. “A date, then. Since I was a bit slow on the uptake the first time.”

“Where did you have in mind?”

“I was thinking,” Crowley said, holding up the drink ticket crushed in the fist that hadn’t just been messing up Ezra’s hair, “since I’m a blackmail risk now, I might go to a bar.”

“On a Monday afternoon?” Ezra drawled, but Crowley saw his eyes soften with the realization that Crowley had kept a token of their time together. “How about coffee. Properly, this time.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Doctor Subtle.”

“For a spy, you’re not very good at reading signals.”

“Ex-spy, thank you.”

They left Ezra’s office bickering, Crowley holding Ezra’s briefcase so Ezra could shrug into his coat.

“And a bad one, it seems, to keep such damning evidence in the pocket of the pants I know you weren’t wearing the last time I saw you.”

“Well, I didn’t have a room of hostile lesbians to impress this time. I dressed down.”

“Is this like a woman asking if her outfit looks good? Is there a wrong answer here?”

“Please. If I were a woman, I would look exactly as good in a suit as I do now.”

As they rounded the bottom of the staircase into the foyer, elbows knocking and hands not quite brushing, Crowley saw Brian, standing outside Evelyn’s closed door with the expression of one who had just put all the pieces together.

Crowley was gearing up to give him the sort of silencing glare he had so perfected over the last decade when Ezra put a discreet hand on his arm. Brian’s eyes widened.

“Leave him be,” Ezra murmured. “It’s the least I can do for him, poor smitten boy.”

Surely enough, when Crowley looked back, Brian was smiling a small, private grin. What the hell, Crowley thought, and winked.

* * *

The coffee shop itself was Crowley’s idea of hell: hordes of college students all dressed like knockoff beatniks, spouting terrible poetry not worthy of the name.

 _“This_ is your favorite coffee shop?” he said.

Ezra shrugged carelessly, a smug grin belying his satisfaction having succeeded in bringing Crowley there with his underhanded pretenses. “They make the best espresso. You might fit in here, with your newfound poverty and your angst.”

“Don’t joke about that,” Crowley shuddered, then scowled as a young man who had overheard Ezra nodded in agreement. “Christ, how do you live with this?”

Ezra gave a real shrug, looking around him with genuine fondness, and Crowley felt his own sentiments softening towards the shop solely based on Ezra’s love for it. “These kids are the future. I like to come here and see what the next generation will do; the things we’re too old and set in our ways to imagine. It gives me hope.”

The young man flashed Ezra a surprised, respectful look, nodded again, and kept nodding. “That’s cool, man.”

“Have you even read Kerouac?” Crowley snapped.

Ezra dragged him away before the man could answer, laughing. Crowley felt his annoyance, too, melt away in the face of Ezra’s happiness.

“You should be glad they’re thinking critically. Some of the slang is a bit… over the top, but they have good hearts.”

“They make me feel obsolete,” Crowley complained. “Quick, recite some poetry so we blend in.”

Ezra looked unimpressed. “The FBI will take just anyone these days.”

“Can’t keep ‘em, though.”

“If I begged them to take you back, do you think they’d take you off my hands?” Ezra mused. But he lowered his voice, speaking for Crowley alone, to say, _“bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.”_

Ezra’s voice in his ear was a low, soothing rumble and Crowley found himself swaying infinitesimally towards it, in spite of the people surrounding them, watching them, _judging_ them. So this was what it was like to live in secret. He supposed he’d get used to it.

He cleared his throat, taking a step back. “Housman. Very queer of you,” he managed.

Ezra sniffed. “He was a great classical scholar.”

Crowley’s look very clearly said _I don’t believe you_ , and Ezra’s answering grin was unapologetically mischievous.

“I don’t know about that,” Crowley said, conscious of the many ears around them, “but I know I used to know _A Shropshire Lad_ by heart.”

“How very queer of you.”

They could do this. It would be different, and it wouldn’t be easy, but Crowley was used to secrecy. And wasn’t this better, in the end, than the secret life he had been living? Hiding that one was happy surely was preferable to hiding that one was alone.

And there were people, perhaps even in this coffee shop, who understood. Brian, overeager as he was, understood. Evelyn understood. Even one of the agents who had interrogated him, Crowley was fairly certain, understood. It was only a matter of finding them.

He had found Ezra on the first try; how hard could it be?

So he stepped once more into Ezra’s space and, voice just as soft as Ezra’s, murmured, _“I wandered along the river’s edge, sadly and alone, but, looking all about me, I perceived the blue-eyed moon had risen behind the trees, to see me home.”_

Ezra raised his brows. “What?” Crowley said, in his own defense. “I joined the mailing list.”

They didn’t linger in the shop, staying only long enough to grab their coffees and go. Crowley sensed that on an ordinary day, Ezra might spend hours there, listening to tomorrow’s innovators and activists, self-absorbed and pretentious for the time being but filled with some wonderful potential in Ezra’s eyes. This day, though, Ezra ushered them back up the stairs of the classics building and into his own office with only one wrong turn on Crowley’s part.

“Eager,” Crowley teased.

“I waited three months for you to come,” Ezra said. “I’m allowed to be impatient now that you’re here.”

Crowley stilled. “You waited for me?” he asked, unsure he hadn’t misheard or misread.

“Well,” Ezra said, clearly beginning to walk it back. Then he stopped, thought, and suddenly brought his arms around Crowley’s shoulders in a loose hug. “Yes. I waited. Not forever, you understand; if you hadn’t shown up by Christmas I would have cut my losses. But I thought you might come, if I gave you time. And Evelyn said you had a bet going.”

“I would have come sooner, but I got a little tied up in a hearing with the House Un-American Activities Committee and the time just got away from me,” Crowley drawled, dropping his head to rest on Ezra’s shoulder and hugging him back.

“I am sorry.”

Crowley pulled back to look Ezra in the eye. _This_ needed to be cleared up before it festered into something worse. “I made the choice not to lie. I was prepared to lose my job. By the end, I even _wanted_ to. I didn’t want to be that person anymore. I walked out of that building feeling freer than I have since 1942.”

“And what will you do with that freedom?” Ezra asked, a blatant lead-up to something salacious.

Crowley pretended to think. He would not let himself be quite so easily won. “Maybe I'll call my sister and tell her I met a nice man after all.”

Ezra blinked, gratifyingly shocked. “That was real? She wasn’t just some cover story?”

Crowley couldn’t help his laughter; if Ezra always reacted so positively to Crowley telling the truth, things should go quite swimmingly. “Her name is Lilith and I haven’t spoken to her since 1946. But I might now.”

“I can’t believe you. I’d convinced myself she didn’t exist,” Ezra said, shaking his head in what Crowley hoped was fond resignation. “Do I know you at all?”

“Why, Doctor Fell, I thought you’d got me all figured out,” Crowley said archly, sliding his hands up to Ezra’s shoulders. “You’ll shake my faith in the entire psychiatric community.”

“Useless, the lot of them,” Ezra said, just as arch. Crowley was almost proud. “But don’t give up on us just yet. I’ve got plenty of time to find out who you are.”

“ _I’m_ not sure who I am anymore,” Crowley countered, “no thanks to you. But I’m hoping… when I do figure it out again, I’ll be the kind of person you could love.”

“Too late. Didn’t Evelyn tell you? I decided to love you the day I met you. You’ll never be rid of me now.”

“A terrible fate,” Crowley said, inching his hands up towards Ezra's hair again. Ezra smiled like he knew Crowley’s game. “And you can stop pretending to set her up with men now; she doesn’t need your help. I won our bet.”

He could see Ezra dying to ask. But instead Ezra ducked his head in invitation, like a cat asking to be pet. “But who will fix my typewriter?”

Crowley resettled his hands in Ezra’s hair, gently twisting the strands between his fingers. Ezra’s eyes fluttered nearly shut. “I’m sure between your two PhDs you can figure something out.”

“Later,” Ezra murmured, “I can figure it out later,” and then they were kissing.

This, now, was everything Crowley remembered it being: Ezra’s mouth on his neck, Ezra’s hands on his waist, Ezra’s hips flush against his.

“Worried someone will see?” Ezra breathed against the skin of Crowley’s neck. Crowley shook his head. “Good.”

“I thought about this,” he gasped, as Ezra bit his way up to Crowley’s earlobe. “The morning after. I read that stupid poem, and I thought that if I didn’t shower, you would still be –“

“As touching as that is,” Ezra said, grinding his hips into Crowley’s to cut him off, “I’m sure we can discuss it at a more opportune time.”

The sound of many feet and many voices suddenly broke through the buzzing haze in Crowley’s head. It must be four pm. “Guess now isn’t an opportune time for anything.”

Ezra pressed his forehead to Crowley’s shoulder with a deep sigh. “Suppose not. I just wish… I’ve waited for this.”

The twinge of guilt Crowley felt at that was almost entirely drowned out by the thrill of pride that Ezra _wanted_ him, badly enough to have waited two months with no promise of his return. “You have a home, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course, I do,” Ezra said, as if this were a great revelation. “Of course, yes. We should… we should go there.”

Crowley examined his feelings, just in case, but found no fear or hesitation anywhere within him. He would not freeze, this time. He knew what he wanted, and what he wanted was Ezra, in any way Ezra was willing to give himself. The future would happen how it happened, and they would deal with it as it came. But right now, just for one day before life became dangerous again, Crowley wanted to savor it.

Ezra cocked his head, asking a silent question Crowley couldn't answer. Whatever he saw in Crowley must have answered it for him, because he grinned. “How about it? Ready to become a sodomite?”

“That’s the worst line I’ve ever heard,” Crowley informed him. “Never use it again.”

Ezra took his hand, briefly, only to drop it before they reached the door to the outside world. Crowley missed it. “Well, it only works the one time.”

“It didn’t work _this_ time.” Crowley’s hand tingled where Ezra’s had held it, and he thought maybe Ezra’s hand would always hold that magic. Or he hoped so. “But yeah. I think I am.”

If this was what happiness was, Crowley would fight for it until the day he died.

* * *

_No transcripts existed of the conversations Special Agent Anthony J. Crowley had in the weeks following the Daughters of Bilitis' second biennial convention. Perhaps they might have, for a few hours, to be looked over by someone with a higher security clearance than whoever had conducted them, but any remaining documentation consisted only of blacked-out text._

_But if they had existed, they would have gone like this:_

> _W. SHADWELL: You were often seen in the company of one Ezra Fell.  
>  A. CROWLEY: We spoke, yes.  
>  W. SHADWELL: Were you aware that he is a practicing homosexual?  
>  A. CROWLEY: He never disclosed those tendencies to me.  
>  W. SHADWELL: And you never asked?  
>  A. CROWLEY: That would have put me in quite an awkward position if he’d asked why I wanted to know, wouldn’t it?  
>  W. SHADWELL: You understand we are conducting a witch-hunt, Agent Crowley.  
>  A. CROWLEY: I think using that term de-legitimizes this interrogation.  
>  W. SHADWELL: Stop dodging the question.  
>  A. CROWLEY: No, I never asked.  
>  W. SHADWELL: Why not?  
>  A. CROWLEY: I didn’t want to know.  
>  W. SHADWELL: You do realize that it is your job to know these things.  
>  A. CROWLEY: I do.  
>  W. SHADWELL: And yet you refuse to speak of them.  
>  A. CROWLEY: Real kick in the nuts for you, isn't it?_

> _D. HASTUR: Agent Crowley, if you cannot be straight with me there will be consequences.  
>  A. CROWLEY: A poor choice of words, considering what I’ve been accused of.  
>  D. HASTUR: Your wit will do you no favors here.  
>  A. CROWLEY: Precedent would suggest. But, as they say, hope springs eternal.  
>  D. HASTUR: This will be much easier for everyone if you just cooperate.  
>  A. CROWLEY: Are you a fan of poetry?  
>  D. HASTUR: I don't see how this is relevant to our investigation.  
>  A. CROWLEY: Ever read Donne?  
>  D. HASTUR: Unless he wrote about the Daughters of Bilitis, I don’t care.  
>  A. CROWLEY: It’s Bilitis.  
>  D. HASTUR: I also don’t care.  
>  A. CROWLEY: They put you in charge of this and didn’t even give you a pronunciation guide?  
>  D. HASTUR: Agent Crowley –  
>  A. CROWLEY: Can we get someone competent in here?  
>  D. HASTUR: You’ll regret that request.  
>  A. CROWLEY: I don’t traffic in regret._

> _A. YOUNG: I have to say I’m impressed with you, Agent Crowley.  
>  A. CROWLEY: Are you old enough to work here?  
>  A. YOUNG: Yes.  
>  A. CROWLEY: Well, gee, your support means a lot to me, kid. Thanks for sharing.  
>  A. YOUNG: I thought it might. To fly this long under the radar is impressive.  
>  A. CROWLEY: If you think flattery will convince me to confess, you’re an idiot.  
>  A. YOUNG: I don’t think anything will convince you to confess. I also know it doesn’t matter whether you confess or not.  
>  A. YOUNG: My fall from grace is decided, then?  
>  A. YOUNG: You’re too smart to think otherwise.  
>  A. CROWLEY: Well, even Icarus had his moment of clarity.  
>  A. YOUNG: You know, Donne is well enough, but I have to say I prefer Sappho.  
>  A. CROWLEY: I know some women you would get on splendidly with.  
>  A. YOUNG: It was a pleasure talking with you, Agent Crowley. I’ll be sad to see you go.  
>  A. CROWLEY: Well, life is change, change is growth, and other assorted platitudes.  
>  A. YOUNG: Whoever it was – I hope it was worth it.  
>  A. CROWLEY: Time will tell._

_There was no trial. Crowley was scrubbed, carefully and quietly, from all records. He, and whoever it was, disappeared from history - but only for a short while. Because there are people who make history, and living a life in fear is still a life worth living, so long as you fight for a better one. One might call that falling; one could also call it being set free._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many gay men and women did join the military in the hopes of escaping their small-town lives and either returning to live in a larger city or not returning at all. Depressing but understandable.
> 
> I made up some ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT about Montaigne and then looked him up and... was right?? In a broad sense; you'd definitely get docked points for that argument, but it's not _totally_ off base. Not bad for literally picking his name out of a hat for a "don't judge a book by its cover" joke.
> 
> Jimmie Rodgers was a popular artist of the 1950s, with hits like "Honeycomb," "Oh-oh, I'm fallin' in love again" and "Kisses Sweeter than Wine." The specific song Brian has gotten Ezra is [Secretly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_VdtJ_lB0M), which is... really, really, really gay and also a FUCKING BOP. Go listen to it.
> 
> "Beatnik" is a vaguely mocking term for teens who revered and imitated the original Beat poets. You know what they dressed like even if you've never seen a picture of them. Think of them like the original hipsters (and they called themselves that, too). Jack Kerouac wrote _On the Road_.
> 
> Ezra quotes the ninth poem from A. E. Housman's [_Last Poems_](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~martinh/poems/housman.html#LPix). Housman was gay, and while his first group of poems, _A Shropshire Lad_ , is very gay if you look at it, it was also incredibly popular among teenagers in the 1920s and 30s. George Orwell is quoted as saying that he knew _A Shropshire Lad_ by heart in his youth. Housman _was_ a great scholar; poetry was sort of his side hobby.
> 
> Crowley quotes ["The Moon with Blue Eyes"](https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sob/sob024.htm) from _The Songs of Bilitis_.
> 
> In reality, the House Un-American Activities Committee was in decline and out of favor with both the public and Harry Truman by the late 1950s; Crowley is making a joke.
> 
> Crowley's sister is named Lilith because... bible jokes. Just gotta slip in reminders that this is in fact a GO fic every now and then.
> 
> And lastly, whooooo could those people at the end of the chapter be? We'll probably never know.


End file.
